Scarlet Pimpernel

4 hours ago, MillvilleWx said:

Wife sent this to me 

Hahaha!!!  I am so stealing that image!  So, if you had back-to-back salt trucks like this, would that be putting Old Bay on your Old Bay? 

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

The relax is quite different than a pac jet type of pattern. That's happened so much recently that a "relax" is becoming synonymous with "continental Pac invasion" lol. 

When cold retreats next week, flow will be slow and cold will mostly just decay and not be "replaced". What brings cold back on the ens is a very efficient way to go from warm/blah to a single front then cold enuff. Cold continental air from central Canada pushes down into the conus SE over the lakes into the east. Ens guidance unanimously agrees that the Epo and/or pna ridges remain favorable. Potentially for weeks. In this type of setup a -AO regime delivers the goods because of favorable ridge axis offsetting lack of a NAO block when the AO displaces the TPV to hudson bay or south. The look reminds me of Feb/Mar 2003. 

Eta: I left out transient 50/50s would be the key piece for a big storm with the advertised look going into early Feb. We'll see about the NAO. So far it doesn't look to reload quickly 

Thanks for the added insight, Bob!  That's sort of the impression I had, that we shouldn't be waiting around for weeks to clear out a bunch of Pac puke air.  Looking at the flow over the entire north American region on TT to get a better idea, you can see that Canada generally keeps a northerly flow so the cold air source doesn't get obliterated, thanks to that EPO/PNA ridge.  I wonder if in a way this is also a bit reminiscent of 2014, though at the time I believe we had a strongly +AO (whereas -AO this year) and were blessed with having an EPO/PNA ridge on 'roids to help us then.

Just now, RevWarReenactor said:

On the JB stuff; Welcome to 20+ years ago. So many stories. 

Anyway....I am hoping we can still pull out something with this Friday storms, even if its another 1-3. After that, I grow concerned about the pattern. 

I think all models have been advertising a relax soon after whatever occurs Fri-Sat (i.e., the following week).  But I also thought indications were that warmup/relax would be relatively short-lived and we'd be morphing back into a favorable look by the end of the month.  I gave a quick glance at the GEFS mean the other day and that seemed to be the case, but I'll let others who have been following that chime in with better detail.

21 minutes ago, katabatic said:

Buffalo did not disappoint.

Nice!!!  You're gonna need a bigger (@Jebman) shovel though!

Light coating of snow (even on pavement) this morning, with some pixie dust flakes still falling.

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Nothing. He is playing a game. He is targeting snow weenies that just want smoke blown up their ass.  Then he makes incredibly vague predictions. If anywhere along 95 from DC to Portland gets 3” and a breeze he will claim victory and exaggerate the accomplishment. If nothing happens it’s oh well and on to the next. By the time it fails he’s already talking about whatever is next and hooked his audience on that. He sells hopium. 
 

I know it’s an act because I used to actually communicate with him some when I was a meteorology major at psu. He was always a weenie but he wasn’t crazy then. The reason I know he doesn’t believe what he says is I remember some “rules” he knew back then that he has since ignored.

 

One example. This doesn’t affect us much because a east based Nina w a -QBO is just cold and dry.  But they are very snowy NYC to Boston. Many years ago he showed how a chart where an east based Nina -QBO was very cold in the NE. But on that same chart it also showed that a west based Nina w a -QBO was very warm. The QBO loses its effect.  So I know he knows that because he was the reason I know that!

Then some years later after he joined wxbell he ignited his own role and forecasted cold and snow and of course busted really bad. But I knew he knew it was BS. He did that several other times. Said things I knew from the past he knew was untrue. Eventually I stopped reading or watching him at all.  But I’m 100% convinced he isn’t making honest forecasts. He isn’t just a crazy weenie. It’s a business strategy. 
 

 

I knew someone who used to work with him I think while at Accu-Weather, and he didn't care much for JB either.  Thought JB had good knowledge but was a bit arrogant and always "CYA" for anything he got incorrect, saying things like, "well, I got the pattern right but the meteorology wrong!", or something along those lines.

I've mentioned this before but he'd always use the weasel words such as "coldest month...RELATIVE TO AVERAGES".  I swear once he used that to claim that March was the "coldest month of the winter" (RELATIVE TO AVERAGES, mind you!), and then claim victory that his call for a "very cold 2nd half of winter" was correct or whatever.  I used to joke that using his logic, I could claim a rather cool July is the coldest month of the year, relative to averages!!!

42 minutes ago, 87storms said:

Lol, honestly wasn't even thinking about it.  That storm really didn't bother me...it was an obvious sketchy setup.  I've been doing this hobby too long and knew it had "wide right" potential.  I would even say "01" didn't bother me much either.  It was like almost 60 degrees the day before, so that was also becoming sketchy.  I'd say "13" was the most annoying one because it was our last chance to break the snow drought that season. 

Once you realize that our average high temp in January is 10 degrees above freezing, it all starts to make sense.  When it snows here, ya just gotta enjoy it.

Haha, I know...I was just saying that for humor after getting (properly) admonished for mentioning that particular event!  Usually I just say "The Storm Which Shall Not Be Named" (a'la Voldemort!), LOL!!  Anyhow, yeah, I mostly agree with what you say here, we've had plenty of "near misses" that sucked.  But I think "that one" is impressed upon so many people's memory here because we were coming off that amazing record-breaking winter of 2009-10, and then it was pretty cold the following year in Dec. 2010, so expectations and all were perhaps elevated.

1 minute ago, SomeguyfromTakomaPark said:

Just watched a car completely sliding down a hill in dc.  Amazing how bad the roads are with a half inch.  I think they forgot to treat them. 

That half inch or so of cold smoke from a clipper a couple of days before the Jan. 2016 blizzard caused similar incidents.  I was driving home that evening and it was truly white-knuckle driving, the roads were a mess.  No real treatment so cars effectively packed it down into a sheet of ice.

Now as primarily a Browns fan (yeah, I'll admit that!), they were just totally pathetic!  Looked completely unprepared.  Yeah, Flacco had a bad game with the two pick-6's, but also their defense was awful.  Doesn't help to have zero offense for the 2nd half too of course.

The little bit that I paid attention to them, the Lions certainly have a solid team that can potentially go far of course...but seems that their defense has given a lot of scares late in games that they should have locked up easily.

3 minutes ago, 87storms said:

If you guys think Boxing Day was bad, try growing up in the 80s and 90s. It seemed like every winter had at least one failed event, usually because of the mountains and/or temps. Models are way better now. That said, there were also a lot more surprises to cancel things out.

Geez, at least I had the "decency" to not explicitly spell the name out!! 

4 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Happy for the Lions fans. And hats off to Dan Campbell and how he literally willed this team back into relevance...and to this moment. Those fans have waited so long and gone through many seasons of torture, lol Good for them

Agree...I'm not any big time Lions' fan, but for some reason I've always had some affinity for them even when I was younger.  Maybe I just thought the uniform colors were cool back then, who knows.  But yeah, nice to see them have a good season and now get this far.  Same for the Tigers in baseball, I always liked them too.

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

lol 

Kinda reminiscent of B**ing D*y 2010!

2 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Anybody else lose power?

No loss of power, but not long ago when I was driving back home I saw a couple of traffic lights that were blinking yellow, but then changed to green.  I'm guessing they got knocked out for a few seconds.

Just now, stormtracker said:

hurry up gfs, I wanna nap so bad

Is this going to be a drunken PBP (sort of like Drunken Boxing)???  Hopefully we'll get a very slurred "FOLKS!", and then you can return to your martini(s)!

13 minutes ago, mappy said:

For those who celebrate, on BBC right now 

Heck yeah...Galaxy Quest!!!

29 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

Nah. WWA at best friend 

When's the last time we even had a WWA for the DC Metro-Balt, or at least a "legit" one?  Seriously, would that have been March 2022, with that short cold blast and a couple of inches of snow (some areas got more)?  I know there was the pre-dawn half inch in early February last year but don't know if they even issued anything for that (and the only measurable snow all last season!).

Just now, stormtracker said:

I should make more threads in the future

And definitely a lot more FOLKS! and JAWS! to go along with those!

11 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

If we get the coastal to come back from the grave this is going to be the craziest reverse coup seen by the gfs, like some Trojan horse type shit. 

...Or a Trojan Rabbit!

1 minute ago, winter_warlock said:

The top ensembles is the totals from boths storms this week 

Yeah had to look twice and then realized that.  Every member in the overall total is easily >2" area-wide, even more than that.  But that 24-h total for the 2nd storm didn't quite match up.

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Gefs is much better. This is where I want it. 

How's this compare to the previous couple of GEFS cycles?  Don't think I saw those posted from last night and this morning.  Just curious...

1 minute ago, BlizzardNole said:

OT; I work with a guy that grew up just N of Buffalo.  He told me once he drove to the southtowns and went from dry ground to over a foot and heavy snow in just a few miles.  Did his errand and went back home to partly sunny and dry ground.  That's bats!

Yup...you can get crazy snow gradients from those events.  You can go from mostly clear and wet roads to a blizzard in almost no time.  I recall seeing cars come in from the "main" snowbelt of NE Ohio with a several inch or so slab of snow on the roof when all the vehicles around them were dry (I think they left it there to "show off!"  LOL!!!).

36 minutes ago, jayyy said:

At least you know you’d always have lake effect. I graduated from the university of buffalo and it’s honestly like nothing else. 2-4” of snow per hour, sometimes higher - thunder snow at times from these bands and insane winds. That band is easily 3-4” per hour. And they have another SW wind driven LES event comes Tuesday - Wednesday which is typically a long-fetch high impact event. The best place to move around there is the southtowns. Orchard Park where the Bills play is a prime spot down to around Fredonia. 

Having grown up in northeast Ohio, I completely agree with you!  There is really nothing else like a major lake effect event when they hammer you.  I've experienced those 2-4" bands (or more!) and whiteout conditions, as well as thunder-snow.  Northeast Ohio doesn't get as much as Buffalo, simply because Buffalo gets a much longer fetch off Lake Erie (so they'll be in those bands more or less for hours, even days!), but still.  We'd occasionally get some added bands off Lake Huron if the wind direction was right.  It's really cool!!!  Also, lake effect nearly always provided "extra" snow on top of synoptic events at the end, and would give you snow even after rain once it got cold and the winds shifted behind a front.

That scenario shown by the GFS would pretty much make everyone from here to New England pretty darned happy.

4 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

GFS shifted towards a more coherent S/W coming off the WC. results are spectacular lmao

Yes, for sure.  Previous cycles had that trough as just a broad kind of nothing much.  This is, I believe, what @psuhoffman said some pages back what we'd need (at least here in the mid-Atlantic), that trough to really dig down there since there's not much of a southern stream per se.

(ETA:  And, am I mistaken in seeing that a piece of the PV phases somewhat with it??  Or at least starts to.)