Scarlet Pimpernel

2 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Are you kidding me? The Panic Room will be open before Thanksgiving at this rate. BANNER year incoming. 
 

Let’s have some fun, weenies.

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?? 

On 10/30/2019 at 9:54 AM, psuhoffman said:

What if there is no tomorrow?  There wasn’t one today! 

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!

On 10/29/2019 at 3:21 PM, WxWatcher007 said:

BWI: 2.7”
DCA: -231.6”
IAD: 21.1”
RIC: 23.2”

Tiebreaker SBY: 78.3”

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!! 

12 hours ago, H2O said:

If it doesn't snow next week I'm cancelling winter

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:

On 10/31/2019 at 8:46 PM, Bob Chill said:

Hey weenies, figured it would be exceptionally strange for me to not post in the winter thread during Oct so....

TL:DR: Favorable enso is close to off the table. I have no ides if the AO/NAO will cooperate. The north Pac ssta's are moving in the direction of what we want to see but plenty of work to do over the next month. This could be a sign that the Pac jet won't destroy our hopes and dreams and there's no reason at all to think we're F'd yet. My confidence in any outcome is very low still.

I have no opinion on QBO/blocking/strat PV etc yet but I am warming up to the idea that this winter may not be a total disaster. Enso probably won't drive the bus as it's pretty late and the enso regions are ambiguous imo. Numerical data for region 3.4 looks ok but I'm more of a visual person when assessing the influence of the eq Pac and right now it just doesn't look all that great. Region 3.4 warmth seems more of a byproduct of the pac having expansive warmth north of the equator in general and not due to circulation patterns responding to nino forcing.

In early Sept I thought the pac nino and pdo regions looked like trash. This is not a ssta map that inspires confidence in a good winter in the mid atlantic:

 

 

I havent been paying much attention to what others have been saying but if enso isn't going to do much then the next best thing is to have a +PDO. The PDO is what helped make the 2013-16 winters favorable. It may have been the primary reason. Hard to say. It's also what made 95/96 a prolific nina. A +pdo during a nina is very uncommon. Especially a mod+ Nina. When I looked at the ssta map in early Sept my first thought was the PDO region looked like crap. Not as bad as a -pdo but pretty bad.

Over the last 2 months the PDO region has improved. Not as fast as I'd like but it's better. The area off the coast of Japan needs to cool down but you can see the expanding region of BN ssta's in the western pac compared to early Sept. Hopefully that keeps building eastward. It could be the first clue as to what the predominant pac jet structure ends up being this winter.

 

We only have 14 real weeks of winter and it goes quick. As we've seen recently and countless times in the past, the pac jet is a big deal here and get it wrong for a month and you can kiss half or more of winter goodbye regardless of all other indices. The problem is there is no way to know what the jet is going to do weeks or months in advance. Especially during transition months like Nov and early Dec. However, if Nov features a trough in the west pac and a ridge in the east pac centered near the west coast it's going to push the pdo region into a configuration that can be really friendly here. It would also increase our chances of getting off to a good start in early Dec. If there is a persistent good pac pattern in Dec it's entirely possible it will recur throughout met winter. 

It's a chicken or egg argument though just like "the blob" in 2013-15. What causes what? Do the ssta temps force the troposphere or does the trop force the ssta's? IMO it's a little bit of both. Weather patterns force the ssta's and once the warm and cool anomalies are well established they can assist with persistance. 

Gun to head this winter will be close to average in both temps and snowfall and the odds of +climo snowfall are slightly higher than an epic fail. I'm expecting the -EPO to flex at times and I doubt we'll get SE ridged to death.

 

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).

Just now, PDIII said:

haha.. drunks throwing axes.. always ,looking to this event in anticipation of someone getting an axe in the forehead!

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)! 

19 hours ago, RDM said:

   Ok, I can't help myself...  Beyond the battle between "it's" and "its" in this New Age English,...  We have "to" and "too" and "has been" instead of the past tense verb.  Hear it nearly every morning on WTOP when they talk about someone who "has been arrested for..." instead of saying "was arrested for..."   And these are journalism majors?  Hearing the utterance of "has been" brings back vivid memories of my 3rd grade English teacher nearly 50 years ago repeatedly scolding everyone in class.  I can hear her now, "do you want to be a..., "HAS BEEN?"  At the time we thought there was no worse title one could have as an adult.  In the 3rd grade we can't wait to be 18 and be an adult.  Hell, we would have rather been picked to pay right field in baseball during recess than to be called a "has been" for any reason.  Everyone knows only the scrubs are picked to play right field, right?  Oops, I forgot.  We don't keep score anymore because everyone wins!  (no score t-ball is a sore spot too, but I'll refrain) 

   Then we have this new fangled idea of only using a single space after the period at the end of a sentence?  Who came up with that stuff?  Our brains are programmed to add a pause at the end of a sentence to separate thoughts and give both the narrator and listener a split second to comprehend a concept before moving on to the next.  Been a constant point of debate with those charged with educating our daughter for the past 15+ years, to no avail.  

   And next we have the excessive use of "that" mid-sentence for no purpose.  In my former profession where concise content, accuracy and efficiency of the written word was paramount I challenged (note the use of past tense?) those more junior to read a draft to themselves without inclusion of the "that" they had needlessly inserted.  They'd read it, read it again, and then you'd see the gears of learning start to mesh.  More often than not, the use of "that" has no bearing on the overall message and is a waste, time  to write and read.  Ain't that just great?

   No doubt, being mere mortal engineer I've probably mucked up the above diatribe in more ways that one can manage to count with todays new way of doing math.  Yet, I regress into another area where the USA is falling behind on the global education scale.  However, we have our silent soccer leagues where we can vent our frustrations!  Darn it, I got side-tracked again onto another tangent.  But that takes trigonometry to understand.  Do we still teach simple trig?

 

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.

3 hours ago, supernovasky said:

 

BTW, are we going to do a get together before winter hits?

3 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

Are you still in town? Thought you had moved. I might be game for a get together as long as it isn't too long of a hike. Maybe PSU?

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.

43 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

Well, if someone was on here wishing for crazy warmth into December and January, I would say that is insensitive. We live in a place with four seasons - and each season has its own awesome things about it.  So, hoping for spring warmth in spring makes sense to me, as does hoping and wanting winter cold in winter.  The warmth a few Decembers ago was absolutely horrible from my view - and if someone were on here celebrating, trolling with maps showing it extending into January and celebrating, that would also REALLY suck.  Just saying.

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.

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@BaltimoreWxGuy

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!!).

15 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

Tried to ignore your comments the last few weeks but this is over the top. What the he!! is your problem? The solution is simple, if this thread and the people in it offend you then just don't come into it. 

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.

20 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Haven’t you heard? Winter’s over. We’re closed and I’m on holiday. Even brought my dear Abaddon along.

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!! 

20 hours ago, GATECH said:

Like Ralphie, I want an A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++....winter...like 2009-2010, but first we need a real - - - - - - - NAO.  I did see a Christmas tree on the curb this last Monday a block down, the shame, and I felt bad taking mine down on Jan 4.

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!

18 hours ago, GATECH said:

Winter is officially over, the last parking lot snow pile melted at work today, the neighbors finally took down their Christmas lights on Sunday, and the daffodils are in full bloom.  Game, set, match.  I give this winter a C.

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!" 

1 hour ago, PDIII said:

The cool thing about winter here is when it pops off.. man we get hammered.  You just gotta persist through winters like this to cash in.  Seems like it happens every approx 6 years.. probably just a coincidence.. but 87, 93, 96, 03, 10, 16

4 minutes ago, TJ3 said:

Don’t forget 79, 83, 00, 06. Even though the good one in 06 was gone by noon

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

1 hour ago, HighStakes said:

JB says it's not over yet. His actual quote was " look out " around the 20th . I think he even made a vague reference to 1888. Lol. 

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

12 hours ago, ravensrule said:

Being a Cleveland sports fan has to be the most brutal thing in the world. I feel for you. 

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

7 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

If you are feeling randy you can discuss front end thumps, back end love, and your appreciation of big fatties if it’s late and you are wearing your beer goggles.  

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