Scarlet Pimpernel

2 minutes ago, yoda said:

Probably going WWA shortly

Pretty sure at some point this will happen across the metro areas, with an area-wide 2-4" more or less expected.  But interesting the watch actually extended east and south, even into northern MoCo and HoCo

Not a big fan of the "dual  maximum" look, but whatever...that's yet to be resolved.  I'm just glad to have a decent advisory-level event in the offing, and it now looks like it should stick around for a day and not torch on Saturday now.

9 hours ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Groundhog > Weeklies/Ens ?

Poor groundhog, always taking the heat!  What about the Woolly Bears?  They shoulder some of the blame!! 

1 hour ago, Jebman said:

Probably 2014. I got 8 inches in Dale City.

Got the same where I'm at in the Bethesda area from that St. Pat's 2014 storm!  What an awesome event, and it was below freezing for like a day after.  March 2014 itself was an amazing month for snow in this region!

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@Stormchaserchuck1 is in heaven. 

Purple clouds and shrooms! 

Semi off-topic, but is TT still down?  It's been out apparently most of the afternoon.

12 hours ago, ravensrule said:

My wife requires at least 2” for it to be worth it to stay up and track. 

You'll need digital blue pills for that...

29 minutes ago, Weather Will said:

WB 18Z Control:  not staying up late for another inch to track.

 

This just has @ravensrule written all over it! Or my mind has been twisted. Probably both! 

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I agree with Chuck here.  This exact same thing happened in 2019.  All through the fall and early winter the guidance advertised some epic pattern starting mid January.  It held until it was on the doorstep.  It got to about day 10 then suddenly and epically collapsed.  And similar to this year, we did get some snow that winter and so it wasn't a complete disaster.  But the epic winter idea on guidance never came about.  And it was mostly for the same reason, the epic looking blocking collapsed.  And there was a SSW that winter also!  A lot of similarities.

 

The consensus after that year was that the weak nino wasn't able to overcome the strong -PDO pacific base state.  As for why the modeling failed...it was discussed then that the long range guidance is heavily weighted towards the large scale pattern drivers.  The long range guidance saw the same things we saw when many of us made snowy winter forecasts.  They guidance saw a basin wide nino, a -QBO, weak SPV, and expected the canonical atmospheric response to those factors and predicted it.  They did the same thing we did when we made our winter forecasts in October and November.  This year many, including myself, discounted a repeat of 2019 because we rationalized that 2019 was a weak nino and this was a strong nino.  But in the end maybe the easiest explanation is that even this strong nino was unable to countermand the base state.  The depressing part of that is if a strong nino cannot overcome this nina ish pacific base state then probably nothing can and we simply need to wait for this whole pacific cycle to end, however long that may take, be it a few more years or maybe another decade, to expect a truly BIG snowfall year like the one some of us predicted this winter.  

Ahhh, finally found your reply!  I sent a quick note in the medium range thread, but thanks much for this explanation, makes sense.  And again, apologies @WxUSAF if a couple of my comments got off-track from the normal medium-range discussion.

ETA:  At this point, this winter, I'm just hoping for a decent storm that's fun, whether it happens toward the end of this month or in March.  Don't much care.  I am in no way "HECS hunting" by now, but hell, a solid MECS kind of event that we can all follow for a week would be great.  I don't think that's out of the question still before we're done.

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

is there a way to move my last reply to Scarlet over to the new thread? 

PSU...somehow, I managed to see your reply just in time and I much appreciate it, thank you!  What you said makes sense and I agree.  I tried to "react" to that with a "like" but I guess it got moved so my reaction failed, LOL!!  Anyhow, not sure what thread some of these posts ended up in.  @WxUSAF, my apologies if I got too much into some off-topic elements, requiring some of those to be moved.

On 2/12/2024 at 3:22 PM, Maestrobjwa said:

In non-snowy news (I'm trying to figure out who the other music needs are here besides @Scarlet Pimpernel, @09-10 analogy, @stormtracker and myself, lol)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue ! On February 12, 1924, the world first heard that rising clarinet jazz wail that began the meeting of the classical world with the jazz and blues of the American sound. Now the interesting thing is...the original was only 9 minutes long (apprently it was embellished later) and, according to an article I read, this was a program that Gershwin had initially declined to participate in, lol They put his name on the program anyway, and he was convinced later. And the rest was history 

Here is the original version heard that day, with Gershwin himself playing:

 

Hey @Maestrobjwa, thanks for sharing this!!  I had heard it was the 100th anniversary of that amazing piece!  I had the opportunity to see this performed live many years ago by the Atlanta Symphony (when I lived there)...and it was played on a midnight-blue piano (can't remember who did the honors in that performance!).

20 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

We just gotta set our expectations right now.   A big, phased up solution isn't happening.  Get it out of your head now.  Be reasonable...2 to 4 is our goal...4 to 6 is upside.  If you realize this, we could have some real fun tracking.  So to summarize...the goal is 2 to 4.  If that ain't good enough for you, bye.  Don't come in here shitting up this thread.

Right.  And of course at the same time I wouldn't mind seeing a solution kind of like what the GFS showed the other week for like 4 straight cycles.  Obviously that's the upside, but it wasn't a big, phased solution then either as far as I can recall.  Just glad to see something decent coming back for this event.

4 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I don't even know what to say.  

 

Me either...I don't speak Shroomchaser-ese!

42 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

And this is where this relates to the discussion about RIGHT NOW and this winter.  This year is exhibit A, Baltimore averages over 40" of snow in -QBO El Ninos' and it looks like we aren't going to get close to those numbers unfortunately.  Maybe this year is just a fluke as @Bob Chillbelieves.  That is entirely possible.  I respect him tremendously and frankly learned a lot from him, he was doing this with expertise before I was!  But I don't know.  I am just a little more pessimistic about how much of it is a "fluke" that's all.  

Serious question for you, or for anyone else who has been more following the longer range outlooks (extended ensembles, weeklies, that sort if thing).  Obviously those longer range 500 mb plots are smoothed, etc., and are intended to give you an overall view of the flow and pattern.  That said, they consistently ALL showed a far different view of how the last half of February into the first half of March than what we now see on both ops and ensembles.  Like day after day after day.  And it's not like previous years where it got kicked later and later...the "epic" pattern actually moved up in time.  And then...WTF just happened in the last week or so?  I'm not trying to be flippant in any regard.  I'm just curious why those apparently were so far off.  I know we see more "detail" as the time range shortens, but the blocking, cold air source, etc., seems to have all but gone poof.  Also, while I of course believe in "the elephant in the room" (can't say CC...oops, I just did!), it's not like those longer range ensembles wouldn't be influenced by that or "see" it, so to speak.  So the fact that they seem to have flipped cannot really be attributed to that factor.  It would be one thing if for a week or so the longer range ensembles looked great and then looked like shit the blinds, but that's not what happened.

Anyhow, just wondering...

3 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Signs that it could get very warm in the last few days of the month.. maybe 60s

https://ibb.co/YBPYLdV

Meh...we already hit 80 in late January.  60s will be chilly.

2 hours ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Game prep time!

Looks like your personal version of the @Scraff SBFI is on the increase! 

I've got family in the Cleveland area and planning to go up there (not sure if I'll drive or fly yet).  We can observe it right from their deck easily enough and avoid crazy crowds downtown or whatever.  Looking at getting one of those solar lens filters for my camera to get some shots, and those eclipse glasses.  Only thing is...northeast Ohio in early April...typically can be gray/rainy.  But we'll see.  Seems we could easily enough drive elsewhere if it's clear somewhere else nearby.  It's also the Guardians' home opener, of all things, and they'll be playing right when the eclipse will occur.

Closest I ever saw an eclipse at totality was in 1994, there was an annular eclipse that was at its max around Toledo, OH,  I was in Columbus at the time and it was about 80% coverage there (as I recall)...it did get pretty dim.  It was cool how any sun or light that came through leaves left crescent-shaped shadows on the ground.  I was here in the DC area for the big 2017 eclipse but it wasn't as much as the annular one, though still cool!

33 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

you know the vibes have soured a bit when people are mentioning La Nina in a pattern discussion thread during a strong Nino lol

It appears our epic pattern has run into a few elephants along the way! 

Just now, Chris78 said:

Get that bowling ball up in Canada a little East and it might be a little colder.

...Or, phase the living S out of that and give us March 1993 part deux!  LOL!! 

Just now, DarkSharkWX said:

this shouldnt have to be said but therma

i remember the sne storm in 2022 was modeled rain for them
wasnt 2016 modeled as rain far out?

Not sure of 2016, but I honestly don't recall at 10 days if it looked rainy (or various rainy solutions).  I just remember a week out everything locked in to a major winter event.  Now, Feb. 5-6, 2010...I've heard from others (@psuhoffman maybe?) that it was a bit dubious farther out in time once it got on the radar of interest.

Just now, Chris78 said:

I don't think the next few weeks are going to be simple SS waves coming a cross. Alot of NS waves passing to the north. I think if that Northern stream would of gotten out of the way a little quicker and allowed the colder air to come east it could of been a snowier solution.  But maybe it would of shunted everything east. Who knows but it won't matter in 6 hours as it will look different. 

Wasn't that NS energy originally what suppressed the hell out of the potential PD event in the first place?  And now it's farther west.

1 minute ago, Terpeast said:

Lots of cold air lurking nearby on that run. I don’t think this will be a complete rainstorm

Yeah saw that.  I mentioned above that energy (or PV) north of the Lakes maybe looking like it screws us being farther west...but does it almost seem that a phase is in the works (which may or may not be good in the end either for us)?

Medium/long range thread turns into the Panic Room!  @WxWatcher007 Reaper must be face-palming even in retirement, wondering how his legacy turned into that!

7 minutes ago, yoda said:

12z GFS keeps up that nice Miller A rainstorm for Presidents Day 

I await the PSU drought-buster storm! 

But semi-seriously, that energy north of the Lakes being held farther back doesn't do us much favors for the mid-level thermals.  Unless somehow, we get some kind of phase in later runs?

2 hours ago, yoda said:

Laughed I did.  Admit this, I will

Hmmmmm....weenieness leads to anger at 240-h ops GFS runs, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side!  Only at the ensembles and weeklies should you look at this time, as a true Jedi does!