Scarlet Pimpernel

Wow! Maybe some Black Friday specials?? Oh, and I know you've spruced things up around the Room. But has the reaper staff finally upgraded to free wi-fi and continental breakfasts??

A'la "Kung Fu Panda"..."Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present!" Sorry to go all zen there on your humor, haha!

Somehow, this reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit "Chicago Super Fans", where these 3 guys (I think George Wendt of "Cheers" was on that as a guest?) betting on what the Bears' score will be. One of them predicted something like "Bears 72, Lions -28"...and another asked how you can get a negative score in football...to which the reply was "Hey, Ditka will find a way!!" So with that...hey, DCA will find a way!!

I think Ji beat you by about 3 months on that!

Dogwood: ...And a single red rose still blooming in mid-autumn:

Red Maples:

It may not have been the best year for brilliant fall colors, but this season did have some moments. Here are a few for you (splitting this up into multiple messages)... Brilliant Maple:

Welcome back from summertime "hibernation", Bob! I'm rubbing my eyes and waking up myself as we get into November now! Always good to see your thoughts, regardless of how the conditions are, thanks again for your level-headed discussion and insights. I guess this winter will be a "wait and see" how things turn out, especially if the ENSO state perhaps won't be so much of a driving factor. I think what you say here is about as much as one can infer at this point. Some good periods of -EPO would be nice, and not having the SE ridge of death for weeks on end would surely help. I don't think we'll revisit the amazing fortune of 2013-14 (that was in a special class by itself), but if we can even get in that ballpark, it would make for some interesting times. I'm not looking for epic-ness, but some interesting solid events to follow and score on would be a win. Last year was strange...so much relative "hype", and I'm still not sure why various indices and model projections seemed so "off" even in the medium range. But even with that, at least speaking from a DC-metro-centric point of view, we still did halfway decently, all things considered (early snow in Nov., the Jan. event, some solid cold around then as well, plus the snow in mid-Feb).

Ha! I stay far enough away from where the axe throwing area is but it's amusing to see people try it out! I wasn't drunk myself, but I did don my Robin Hood cap to appear like I was at least sort of in costume!

What a gorgeous fall day yesterday! Went to the MD Renaissance Festival (have gone the last several years around this time). Here's a couple of photos I took... At the jousting arena: And here's what apparently is an early version of the NAM (but perhaps more accurate outside 48 hours)!

Get off my lawn, you damned trick-or-treaters...says the old man!! ; ) I'll continue your rant here if you don't mind, haha! OK, being a bit snarky there, but in all honesty I agree with a lot of what you say. The it's vs. its thing kind of irritates me when people don't do it right. Simple to just remember "it's" is the contraction for it is, "its" (with NO apostrophe) is the possessive of it. Also agree with the "someone has been..." vs. just saying "someone was...", but I'm a bit more forgiving on that one. I remember in about 6th grade, a teacher made us all memorize prepositions, and had a funny way of helping you to remember it. Just think of a sewer pipe and any relationship to it will be a preposition: IN the sewer pipe, NEAR the sewer pipe, ALONG the sewer pipe, etc. You get the idea. But I've never forgotten that in trying to determine what's a preposition!! Single space at the end of a sentence? Oh HELL NO!! Yeah, I'll be a Grammar Nazi, and maybe it's (not its, hahaha!) more acceptable to just use a single space with Twitter and other social media to save space or something like that. But in formal (or even not-so-formal) writing? Follow the regular rules! I always learned 2 spaces after a period or colon and one space after a semi-colon or comma. Sometimes, I find it hard to read when someone only puts one space after a period. RDM...not sure if you're old enough(?) to be familiar with Tom Lehrer. I was too young or not yet alive when he did a lot of his routines "live", but my parents indoctrinated me with his stuff when I was growing up (with records, no less!)! Your comment about new math reminded me of his song/skit about that: Oh, and as for trig? Hell, I remember having to interpolate using a table! And walking uphill both ways while doing it! Does anyone know how to interpolate from a table anymore? Part of me thinks perhaps it's just not necessary nowadays of course, but at the same time, a little bit of having to do that does help just to get a taste of how it works. Even if you never have to look at at trig or log table again. It's the idea of it, the knowledge of what to do and how it works, that's important I think.

Another mid-Atlantic get-together might be fun, if anyone else is looking into this too. I'd be up for it. Maybe as we get more into fall(?)...it's a great time of year.

So apparently, global warming has now affected Ji...this is remarkably early even for him to cancel winter!!

Stay cool everyone! Feels awful out there...ugh. Sitting here recovering from having a pin placed in the top joint of my left pinky finger to set it...had that done earlier this morning. Got injured last week at a softball game (on a bad throw, damn the 3rd baseman haha!). Fractured the top part and dinged the joint out of place. Fun times! Pin comes out in about 4 weeks.

I hear you, and can certainly understand what you are saying in your posts. For me, I find the time from about mid-March into first part of April to be a sort of weather "no man's land" and kind of a boring/doldrums period after actively tracking and following things all winter. I don't usually come in here much in the spring and summer or early fall, except occasionally if there's something really interesting like severe weather or a tropical system. I suspect many on this board are like that, too; not that they don't enjoy the other seasons, but a large number are here for the winter time tracking. Then I get interested again come later in the fall as hints of the upcoming winter start coming out. That said, I do enjoy spring, once we're into it (except perhaps for the allergies). Fall is perhaps (next to winter!) my favorite season, it's so nice to come out of a long, hot summer and enter a period of increasingly crisp evenings and pleasant days...plus the colors as the leaves change.

Hey, close enough to another March 25th snow for my birthday! Even if it is the FV3, I'm in for that pipe dream!

OK, I kind of joked in the Banter thread giving this winter a "C-plus(!!!) a'la Ralphie in "A Christmas Story". But in all honesty, I think that (ironically?) would have to be my final grade at this point. So C+ it is, but I won't shoot my eye out! It's all subjective, to be sure, depending on what one's expectations are, what one favors in a "good" vs. "meh" winter, etc. And with that, it's obviously hard to pin a single score that covers the gamut. (Subjective) reasoning for my grade... The Good: Jan. 12-13 storm, dropped 11.0" in my location, easily the largest single-event amount since the Jan. 2016 Blizzard. And setting aside that blizzard, it was the most snowfall in an event since Feb. 2014. The February 20 snow-to-ice event. Really cool and kind of over-performed. We never got the "wash out" that I was worried about once the snow ended, though 50+ degrees and sunny the next day pretty well got rid of it. A couple of legitimate, solid cold outbreaks during MLK weekend in January and late Jan/early Feb. The Feb. 1 light snow event was nifty...not a lot (~1.5" for me), but cold smoke on a cold day. And of course the November event, a week before Thanksgiving. Getting just above climo for the season around here helped, too...always a plus. The Bad: Very inconsistent season, never seemed like much of anything got truly "off the ground". Not that I expected wall-to-wall, but a lot of "potential" just evaporated for the most part. And yeah, some of that was subjective expectation. However, long range models and other indicators were a travesty this year, for whatever reason. And it wasn't like only one model was looking great 10 days out while others looked like crap...it was consistent across the board. Then it would all disintegrate for the most part as time went on. Made it very hard to assess or make a forecast for much of anything. The Ugly: Maybe this is again perspective, but seems like we had an inordinate amount of cold, rainy days compared to most years. It was wet to be sure. Just seemed like every few days we'd be looking at 35 and rain near the metro areas, while others farther north/west were looking at ice changing to 35 and rain. Dank and cold...bleah!...about had my fill of that. And the MJO lolly-gagging in phase 5-6 there for a good while. Another "ugly", though this isn't directly related to weather, was the level of discussion and commentary in here. I know many were frustrated, but the barrage of negative and "deb" posts, or just plain God-awful analysis (or assumptions) got very trying. Enough to push away some of the long-time very good posters, which was a big loss (hope they come back!!).

Bit of a late response here I know...but yeah, why does anyone care if some are discussing any possibilities in the medium range (in the medium/long range thread, no less...the horror!). I've been following this lightly for the past few days and have very little to no expectations that much of anything will come of it. But it's still interesting to see what's happening or *if* anything will. If we get lucky with a bombed out system that gives us a late-season snow then great. If not, it's no real "loss" at this point in the season.

Ha! Looks like it could be one of the puppies @Bob Chill or @stormtracker threatened to kick at one point after some model run weeks ago! Or maybe that was bunnies (@Ralph Wiggum?) , can't recall exactly! You may be on holiday now, but I'm sure some are wondering when early registration begins for next winter's reaping...low price specials if you go early?? Maybe toss in a few free Ginzu knives or a bamboo steamer. Gotta keep the business competitive during the off-season, ya know!!

I should perhaps modify my original post/response...full story for this winter: Expectations of winter back in November: Then reality sets in by March: Wicked witch there almost kinda looks like the reaper!

What, not giving winter a C+ like Ralphie?? And neighbors still had Christmas lights up into March? OK, I once saw a couple of guys carrying out a browned, old Christmas tree some years ago in *April*. They must have seen my expression of disbelief, they actually seemed embarrassed and said "I know...sorry!"

Thanks...I needed some lotto numbers for this Friday! This should work!

So he's gone from 1993 to 1888 now, eh?

And lest I forget "The Drive", "The Fumble", "The Shot"...

Depends on what type of bar you're in...