eduggs

0z GFS wasn't hopeless. But the midlevel fronto makes it look closer than it is. Hopefully the EC makes a similar shift.

As with just about every storm threat this year, we need the southern vort max to round the base of the trof - we need PVA on the downstream side of the trof to initiate a negative tilt, raise heights downstream sooner, and keep the zone of high baroclinicity closer to the coast instead of offshore. This would enable a SLP center to form in the SE or near the coast instead of offshore. If we have to wait for follow-up northern stream shortwaves to sharpen the trof, the incipient SLP will be too far offshore to have an impact. We're really missing southern stream involvement. This positively tilted, lagging vortmax crap shown on every model is not going to cut it. I think we had an EC run or two a few days ago and a GFS run a day ago that almost worked. But nothing since has really been close.

But what is the correlation coefficient? My guess is the sample sizes are way too small for any confidence in the correlations? How many times have we been in MJO phase 4 in March? And what was the state of the other climate indices? People read way too much into these indices - without understanding statistics or causality.

I'll take a 6 inch snowstorm in a heartbeat. It's been more than 1 full year since my last one.

Lots of stuff has looked good 8-9 days out. We gotta reel it in - bring it inside 5 days to take it seriously.

One month ago that was true. Not anymore. Days are noticeably longer. Spring is near.

Yeah I saw that. H5 looks potentially promising even though ensembles are unexciting. The 12z CMC has it too. Too bad it's so far out.

I'm a little surprised that EWR has rarely gotten more snow than ISP over that stretch, and never by much. I guess it's not far enough NW. Overall the stations are pretty similar most years.

I hate this winter. Still waiting for a solid snow and nothing promising to track. Monday doesn't have much of a ceiling. The wettest models (and ens individuals) are rain. It's a lousy setup. Maybe interior SNE and especially NNE has a shot.

This is an ignorant comment.

Sure looks nasty for ZR in the HV... probably starting well before dawn down to parts of northern Westchester and Rockland. Too bad there are relatively few official reporting stations between POU and ALB.

That wasn't the only rain event. Probably almost 2" of liquid from the blizzard and 0.5 to 0.6" in early Jan.

Those aren't perfectly correlated. There are no guarantees, only probabilities.

The GFS has backed off very gradually for many cycles. Over time it has been increasing the rain and decreasing the snow and sleet. None of the individual runs looks like a big change, but taken together it has shifted from a potentially significant frozen event to rain ending as freezing rain.

Yup. Only in very snowy or perhaps dry months would we expect more snow than rain in NYC in January. I think the average is closer to 4, but it's true either way. I guess very snowy months would probably be about equal rain and snow on average, which makes sense.

The snow to ice event set up your snowpack. South of Sussex Co. NJ it was mostly slush turned to a thin glacial crust. That still beats bare ground though. But overall I don't care for cold without snow.

When it snows, I go outside every chance I get. I'm not one of these people who enjoys it as modeled output on my screen or through my living room window. I like to actually experience it. This winter I've probably seen 10 or 12 inches cumulative. I've had an inch or two of snowcover for a few weeks now. On paper, that doesn't sound too bad. But the enjoyment level has been really low. The snow has come in about 5 minor events... mostly at night or with very light intensity. The actual opportunity to enjoy falling snow has been very limited. The biggest accumulation was soaked into a puddle of mashed potatoes before dawn. The 2nd biggest was a 3-hour burst that also occurred before dawn. I'm still waiting for something decent. It doesn't have to be a blizzard, just a solid snowstorm. I think it's actually been over a year now since the last significant event locally. There's still time to spread the wealth, but the window is closing. I don't want to have to wait another 10 months.

Well sure. Since none of us average a lot of snow, one big storm exceeds the average. The thing was 2 of 3 significant snowstorms hit exactly the same areas. And the 3rd hit SNJ. So it ended up being a month of big winners and big losers - with a sharp line of demarcation. I guess there was also a solid event for northern Sussex and Orange Counties - but that ended up as mostly slush further south.

I think even Islip had more rain than snow (liquid) last month. Most everywhere else got much more rain than snow.

February will probably have more rain than snow just like January did.

Seems like every time there's a sniff of a threat it goes to shit. Lousy winter locally. Potential snow threats are always out on the distant horizon. Bummer.

The NAM has more than an inch of non-freezing rain for most of the area. That would be fun. Then maybe we get a few tenths of freezing rain. Doubly fun.

I hate this storm. You just know we're going to finally get heavy precipitation back this way (EPA, WCNJ) and it's going to be heavy ZR.

2 semi-legit wintry threats now showing up on multiple models. Both have potential problems, so I'll set expectations at 0 and be happy for anything we get.

Two wintry threats now in the medium range - Friday and Sun night-Monday. GFS and UK have wintry outcomes for both. The CMC is close for both but not quite there. Eminently trackable.