Always in Zugzwang

Very true...and I know you typically aren't a deb, though at times quite snarky this winter. Which I totally get, given how utterly frustrating it has been. I don't think anyone with any sense of reason expected a "great" winter this year by any means. But I really don't think anyone, even the most pessimistic, thought it would be this devoid of anything. Like essentially wall-to-wall. The anti 2013-14 so to speak! We've had one 0.5" snow early morning on February 1 (where I'm at, anyhow) that was gone before noon...well, OK, there was like 15 min. of some flurries at the start of that Arctic blast over Christmas weekend and a bit of snow TV yesterday. And it's not just the paucity of snow, it's also just how extremely warm it's been (other than most of December being a bit below normal, enhanced by Christmas weekend). When you have a +7 temperature departure for January and February (just looking at DCA for reference, but pretty much the same most everywhere here), you're really hard pressed to get anything. Not like we've been cold and dry or anything like that. So assuming we don't really get anything the rest of this season, offhand, what would you rank this winter in terms of futility or near-shutout? Say, compared to 2001-02, 2011-12, or 2019-20 for instance? In terms of warmth and lack of snow?

At this point we need the winter equivalent of the Immaculate Reception. Instead, all we got was the Immaculate Deception!!

Hopefully the right trajectory so that it will at least clear out by later Friday and leave us a decent weekend!

Hahaha, yup! That's exactly what happened! Not only that, but we also all got thrown under the bus!

Well, that's a fair point, it did seem the Euro went more toward the GFS (I assume you're talking about the 18Z Euro ensemble mostly?). But right now, it's hard to really say which model is moving which solution. The 00Z GFS actually seemed to up the ante with that even farther north and west solution, and quite wound up.

Not sure I'd necessarily say brutal, but I sure as hell wish the GFS would have at least given a hat-tip to the more favorable solutions that's for sure!

It's hard to say. Is that "extreme outlier" (GFS, I assume you mean) really all that extreme? OK, I would maybe doubt that much of a wound up system and maybe not quite that far west as what the 00Z GFS showed. But the end result...too far north and west where we just get rain...is hardly an outlier at this point. Maybe that sounds a bit cynical, but you know what I mean. And you're right, all we can do for the next couple of days is keep on trackin'. If this goes totally down the sh*tter by Monday or Tuesday, well, that will probably be the end of it.

I guess we wait and see what the GEFS ensembles look like...oh well.

So a rainier rain then compared to the last couple of runs.

Haha, that works too! Maybe...MAYBE!!...if we actually can reel this damned thing in, we should start up that classic bus!!

So, Herbie the (VW) Love Bug (ICON) crushes us!!

LOL! Extra kudos for the Gordon Ramsay reference! Seen many episodes of his "Hell's Kitchen", and it's pretty interesting and amusing. Now, if only the GFS can get more on board??

Since it's so spring-like, how about a daffodil?

But I already see the back edge of the sunshine...it will be here at about 6PM!!

First rule of the Don't Know Club: Don't say you can't know yet!

Yeah not a lot of "huge" hits, but honestly not sure if anyone is really looking for a huge one at this point. There are a couple or so others that are pretty decent and a couple that have a more "southern component" to the max amount. Hell, can we just order P28 and be done with it?!?!

You got 'd by @ravensrule already! Too much of a bat signal hahaha!

Strangely, that's not as bad an outcome as I would have thought given how things looked earlier on. Just need to punch that damned SER down more, somehow, some way!

I don't know for sure, but I'll let you know in 10 days or so! But I don't feel overly confident if I will or not this far in advance.

This is actually what has been so damned frustrating to me. Though not like I or anyone else can do anything about it of course. Guidance has consistently shown a developing and impressive -NAO blocking signal, however, we continue to have that ever-present SE ridge. It. Just. Won't. Go. Away! Won't even recede for enough time for something good to happen. So you end up with that linkage between SER and -NAO and we're screwed. Yeah, a few times the models depicted some push-back against the SER and hints that we might get some decent chance at a decent event. But then that idea disappears and the storm goes off well to our northwest. Nothing is cutting through that SER, it seems, and not much squashing it enough either. There's always a possibility that could change, especially with shortening wavelengths as we get into March. Hopefully something can punch it down enough before we're getting up to the edge of realistic snow climo range.

Continued photos!... A female cardinal at a bird feeder. Early cherry blossoms.

OK folks! A little something to cheer you all up with the lack of snow and our incessant winter fails! A few photos... Snowdrop flower, I changed the color/tone settings to make the greens look copper (I thought it looked cool!). A stunning tree, in a creamy (and slightly grainy) black & white.

Most of us here would love a solid advisory to warning level event (doesn't have to be some prolific HECS!), and a couple of nice, wintry feeling days even in early March, at this point. I'd look at it like that event we got around March 14 or 15 last year. Warm leading in, but we got one cold, brisk, snowy day with advisory level snow which was pretty cool. Of course after a couple of days it was gone and we warmed up again, but it was fun!