eduggs

Your meteorological explanation makes sense. But I can't help but feel that we get imprinted early on when a threat is still in the medium or long range. We categorize our initial impression of the magnitude of possibility as a kind of unconscious expectation. And I think this initial impression biases our gut feeling from then on. It could explain why some people are dismissive of late-appearing threats that were not signaled in the LR or why they hold out hope for trivial events that were formerly modeled as monsters.

That doesn't look so unreasonable. Ratio gradient and possibly a touch of mixing far SE will probably smooth that out a bit. Maybe knock a tenth of QPF off everywhere and it looks very plausible.

Yeah, it ended up a touch better aloft and at the surface. Probably a touch worse through about 36 or 39hr and then a touch better thereafter. But the runs are nearly identical. Great run to run consistency for at least 6 hours Overanalyzing feels a little like desperation though...squinting to see an improvement. If there is a positive change it will be pretty obvious I think. This run wasn't that. Any miniscule improvement on the NAM does not offset the loss of 6 hours before go time.

SF and the FL offices are probably the only ones we can't beat.

Midwest, PA, and NY - wow! Long time.

Yes. And they almost always do in coastal storms.

One good thing with this event is it should be at or below freezing most places during the precipitation. Coastal and urban areas, esp LI might be a little above, but will likely cool in steadier snow. With these temperatures, even a few inches of snow will feel very wintry.

Definitely. Intensities could even be briefly heavier. But we're in the good stuff relatively briefly. And there's a chance our area ends up partly in-between the best banding. Someone in our region should hit 4" - heck maybe even 6" out on LI. But the rapid deepening of the SLP does not favor our area, so we're probably looking at accumulations < 4".

What happened to this subforum? When I lived in MA 20 years ago and subsequently posted in the predecessor forums, hobbyists actually knew how to read weather model output. People looked at soundings and upper level charts. There was a lot less wishcasting and snow-entitlement. I guess somewhere along the line 3rd party snow maps and twitter meteorologists made us all stupid. It's kind of like how GPS ruined our sense of navigation.

Check GFS and NAM again.

The GFS has less than a tenth QPF west of the Cape after 12z Friday. I would guess it ends up lingering longer, but that's what the GFS shows. The EC looks more like .1-.2, which seems reasonable.

On the RGEM, not the GFS, EC etc. If it wraps up a little bit it will probably hang around longer.

Eastern areas should get a little lingering daytime snowfall. But for many this will primarily be a nighttime event.

It increased QPF in a few areas and decreased in others. Under a tenth either way for the most part. Like you say, almost identical distribution.

Max reflectivity of hi-res max ensemble only 37ish? Meh

I can't wait until we pass that magic MJO threshold from phase 7.9999 to 8.0000. Then we can snow!

This event looks like a Miller A. The SLP develops in the South and moves NE up the coast with very little hint of transfer. There's no midwestern clipper low or primary transferring to a coastal low. That's pretty classic Miller A.

True. It signaled it early too. Others were mostly rain until yesterday.

Look at H5. The problem is not convection. Precipitation isn't generated by the L on the map. It's generated by vertical ascent, which is determined by the upper levels just like surface pressure is. So precipitation and SLP are caused by the same thing. The NAM run that was tucked had a much sharper trof. The weaker runs were flatter.

It's interesting how people in different regions and based on different storms have such a different impression of individual models. People in the NYC, PHL, and MA forums have been praising the RGEM recently for its performance this winter. I think every model has its day. But it's never black and white. A model might nail one aspect of a storm in one region, but miss something else, somewhere else. No single model is best everywhere, every time.

Looks too generous in CT. I'd cut those in half and knock an inch or two off RI and SEMA. Hopefully we double those tomorrow, but there's not enough support for big numbers right now IMO.

More spread that any typical day, sure. But I would argue less spread than usual with a shortwave of that sharpness and implied sensitivity.

When there isn't a discernable trend for several runs and there is also inter-model agreement, then we might be getting close to the final outcome. Antonio Brown would be congrats Buffalo one run and then what storm? the next.

NAM-GFS agreement. Lock it.

The 12z NAM is west of the 6z GFS and a few mb deeper. H7 does not look great on either of those runs if you want a significant snowstorm.