Always in Zugzwang

Same to you, have a great Holiday! This is a great community, despite some disagreements and other stuff that can go on at times. I am sure I speak for many others, but your input here is valuable and I always have appreciated your level-headed presentation while at the same time keeping an overall reasonable optimistic output on snow chances.

Here's a photo of some Advent candles I took earlier this evening, just for fun!

Ha! Well, the result may be the same! Drambuie is just an excuse to drink Scotch as a liqueur!

Not bad news at all given what we saw today in general. I wonder if they're keying on different short waves (timing) to accomplish that...or if that's the effect of a couple or three total.

Sounds tasty! Now I feel like tapping into the Drambuie I have in the cabinet, or perhaps a single malt!

There was some question of when we last had 2 weeks straight of BN temps in the DC area. Not sure if it was mentioned, but Feb. 2015 came close (looking just at DCA, on LWX's climate summary). Nearly every day was below normal to way below normal for about the last 20 days of the month. I saw a day with a zero (right on average) and +3 during that time frame to "interrupt" an otherwise straight-up below the mean period and bitterly cold month in general. First 8 days had some warm days mixed with cooler ones. Feb. 2007 I think was similar, but don't have the dailies to check...the monthly departure for both Feb. 2007 and 2015 was on the order of -8.5 (with 2015 being a bit colder than 2007).

Happy Christmas, everyone!!

Never much cared for that phrase myself. But I believe it's used for situations where things aren't necessarily the greatest look, but given alternatives or trends that haven't looked great, we'd "take it" as is modeled (if it worked out that way) before it gets worse. Something like that. I guess it's sort of analogous to the "La-la-la-lock it up!" phrase when a storm is modeled as a HECS. I see your point, on the one hand it's modeled digital snow, not like we have control over it in advance and not like we can "choose" anything. On the other hand, it's just a hope or wish that that solution works out. That's probably more explanation than you cared for, but that's how I interpret it!

Is that from the Great Lakes Brewing Co. (in Cleveland) by chance? They have a beer called the Eliot Ness. My home-town brew, I'm a big fan of their stuff! That one, the Dortmunder Gold, and Edmund Fitzgerald porter are probably their best main-stays (along with many of their seasonal brews).

I believe the Euro was kind of similar to what the 12Z GFS showed...but more moisture and snow? Going by some of the discussion earlier, it had similar cold powder but more like ~6"+ I gather. Somewhat weaker wave like this.

Hmm, looks like RR hacked Chill's account there! 'Taint a doubt about it! But seriously in response to Wonderdog's question, yes, "taint" just refers to not all snow...where you end up mixing with or changing over to freezing rain/sleet, and perhaps get all rain for a time.

Yeah, not so sure of the "double pump" the Euro is throwing out there, though it is an interesting solution to be sure. One indication that's been showing up with this is the good moisture fetch/flow into the cold air; so perhaps even a less amplified wave can give us a solid event (caveat being, of course, that the best moisture flow occurs most in the more amplified solutions!).

Many thanks @WxUSAF and @Cobalt! So, reasonably below or near freezing throughout if that were to happen. Would imply that stuff will be a brick by the time we go back into a deep freeze of sorts after that, if this solution verifies.

Very interesting. Any indication of how much below freezing we are during the ice part? I know it's perhaps a bit much to parse those details right now, but I was just curious, since ice potential has been a threat for this event all along in varying degrees.

This is true, in general. Though the next week event has been a bit all over the place, the setup for something has been there for awhile. Not comparing this in any way at this point, but off the top of my head 3 of the biggest events I experienced here that had (relatively) long lead indications consistently are PD-II (it seemed clear ~5 or so days out we were in for a major overrunning event), Feb. 5-6, 2010 (close to a week out the setup was there), and the Jan. 2016 blizzard (the Saturday before, I distinctly recall all models "locking in" to a big one).

Wow! So much better than having that thing head up toward the Ohio Valley area. ETA: And notice that the 2m temps are in the 20s on this run.

I was thinking the same exact thing when I looked at this earlier, Bob. First thing this morning I checked the overnight/early morning discussions and saw lots of pretty maps and "wow!" comments, and thought maybe things were looking pretty good. Then I went and checked the details of the 06Z GFS and didn't get all the hype. Certainly it looked great for those much farther west and north. And yeah, here in the 'burbs or closer in, snow and then potentially a good bit of ice--for awhile. But then we lose the column down to the surface and there's a good period of all rain before it cools off again. That tempered the enthusiasm for sure. Plus, like you said, I don't like seeing the low go way to our northwest like that; we're very close to not even getting much on the front end even with that set-up. It's better than 00Z, but still. I'd rather see a nice front-end of snow followed only by sleet/ice if we have to transition, rather than going to cold rain for hours. Now, that thing the 06Z GFS showed at the end of its run, the first week of the New Year...I'll definitely agree that was rather pretty to look at and dream about!

True enough. I admit myself to "looking ahead" like that. The potential later next week perhaps has a more solid or "easier"(?) setup for us to score a good event in this area. But yeah, the Christmas thing has certainly trended colder (compared to a few days ago) and could still surprise us more that we think. (And...are we actually going to dub it the Chill storm, should that event actually materialize in a good way? )

Back on topic (sort of), I'm not overly excited about the Christmas potential...but of course some flakes and chill in the air would be much better than 50+ and rain. Next week between the Holidays looks a lot more serious...particularly interested in the cold and then the late-week potential. I'm sure we'll all look forward to a Holiday week of tracking something fun, even if not much happens right on Christmas itself.

Yeah, and I really hate it when our snow changes over to aleet!

Ha!! That does seem true the past few years!!

I'm 50/50 on any potential Holiday event interest, myself. It would be great, of course, if we could get something wintry on Christmas. But I don't much like the indications in the overall pattern right now for that, either. Whether it's very warm or cold, I just hope it's at least a nice day out (heavy snow would count as a nice day of course!)...rainy and any temperature would be kind of a drag. The week between Christmas and New Year's perhaps might have more to offer us, but that is getting a bit out in time. Seems that was perhaps the better possibility anyhow for some time. I'd take something fun to track then, even if it meant "giving up" snow for Christmas.

Wow. GFS really lays an egg all of a sudden. Hopefully something odd going on, that's a huge change after a consistent good look.

Well, don't know about that...the Bob Chill Deathband is a climatological feature in MoCo, isn't it?

Very true. It's a good set-up in that regard, no waiting for stuff to develop on top of us or anything like that. Just checked the radar loop, and that's a nice feed of moisture making a beeline right at us.