Scarlet Pimpernel

After a few brewskies, that never fails! Actually, after a few too many, it's almost safe to mention the CRAS.

I grew up in northeast Ohio and have witnessed the Indians lose two World Series Game 7s in extra innings in my lifetime. 1997 and 2016!! That hurt. I think 1997 was slightly worse because they had a 2-1 lead vs. the Marlins that year going into the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7...Jose Mesa came in and blew the save allowing the tying run, and the Marlins then won in the 11th. Then of course the Cubs won in 10 in 2016. At least vs. the Cubs, they were facing a heavily favored opponent and Cleveland's pitching was already highly short-staffed through the post-season (their #2 and 3 starters were out due to injury)...they literally had nothing left and had overused their bullpen by Game 7. Still convinced that if they had Carrasco (#2 starter) available, they'd have dispensed with the Cubs earlier in that series...but them's the breaks (literally...Carrasco's hand was broken at the end of the regular season on a line drive). But hey...Cavs won the NBA championship in 2016 so at least there's that, haha!!!

I always thought mentioning the phase of the MJO was a good pick-up line, but never know with the younger crowd nowadays!!

LOL! Well, I'll 2nd, 3rd, 4th...or whatever...what others have said. I have always appreciated your analysis, it's very knowledgeable and informative, not to mention descriptive. Hope you keep that going! I think you, @Bob Chill and @psuhoffman are like the mid-Atlantic troika of analysis and information. Like having 3 starting ace pitchers. Level-headed and objective, with an edge of humor when needed. Or instead of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, you're like the three horsemen of winter (in a good way of course!). Or something like that...I'll dispense with the silly analogies now!

Yup...it was a good storm (the only one worthwhile that I recall from that winter!)...but definitely a gradient toward much better totals as you went west and north of the DC area, and especially up toward NYC as I recall. Where I was at (Capitol Hill area in DC at the time), we got around 8". And yeah, it was gone in a hurry, as it was in the 60s the following week!

So, if we were to rate winters like best/worst movies of all time, how would one list the equivalence? How's this for starters...? Best: 2002-03: Citizen Kane (Ji can cryptically blurt out "PD-II" instead of "Rosebud") 2009-10: Casablanca ("HECS us Sam, HECS us again!") 2013-14: Gone with the Wind ("With God as my witness, we'll never go snowless again!") Worst: 2011-12: Ishtar (OK, I never actually saw this one, but does it matter?!) 2001-02: Plan 9 from Outer Space (now wait a minute, I kinda liked that movie in an MST 3000 kind of way, haha!) 2016-17: Jurassic Park, the Lost World (2 hours of my life I cannot get back!)

I'd be down with St. Pat's II this year (on the 5th anniversary of the original in 2014)!! But won't hold my breath, of course.

Agree with what you both say. It is subjective, for sure. Obviously, there are some stand-out winters (02-03, 09-10, 13-14) that most everyone would put up as a top tier. Like listing the best movies of all time. But there are a lot of other variables for sure, and everyone has their own criteria. Some have said that 15-16 was "meh" or worse, despite the historic blizzard, because much of that winter besides that storm had little to cheer about (certainly the record warm December sucked!). Fair enough, I suppose. But personally, that one week in January leading up to and through the blizzard "made it" for me. And February wasn't totally awful...we got one decent event that was snow then ice around mid-month, and it wasn't a torch. I've said this before, but I think 06-07 was pretty solid in my opinion, from about mid-January onward. I actually liked that season for the most part even though it wasn't prolific with snow around metro DC. Kind of a forgotten, underrated winter in some ways. Extremely cold February, and though we just missed on the V-Day storm (getting sleet and ice instead), we still got a couple of nice events including that one. Feb. 2015 was very similar in that regard, but we scored more snow. I personally don't think we need a HECS to make it a great year. We didn't really get one in 13-14 (unless you want to count the Feb. event as one, but not sure of that), but we had many moderate "MECS" type events and plenty of cold, which made it great because it was as close to a "door to door" winter as you'll see around here. Even @Bob Chill I think said he was exhausted from tracking that year!

This sounds like a very diplomatic way of saying "Ji"!

Very good points here. Especially the part about Congress (or the gov't in general) not making laws to abridge freedom of speech...not the same as a private entity such as a weather board setting rules on what discussion is allowed or what kinds of screen names one can use. Same reason that many message boards have restrictions on "offensive language" (f bombs, other bad language, etc.), where posts get scrubbed. Now if Congress passed a law that said that weather forums are not allowed to mention any political subject or have politically-charged names...*that* would clearly violate the 1st amendment. And God forbid they say we can't discuss snow! I don't mind a bit of political commentary in here from time to time...it's like anything else in life, we all experience it and it's probably difficult to completely avoid. But nothing way out there or too heavy. I also don't have a problem with banning certain types of usernames that are either blatantly offensive or what would be considered overtly political (even if meant humorously) for the given environment. Obviously, that's a bit of a gray area but some things are obvious..."buildthewall" is more clearly a statement nearly as much as "MAGA", whether intended or not.

Yup, I hear you. The spring break this year is kind of strange with how short it is, but I think they're changing it back next year (not sure?) in MoCo. Also found it odd that they might cut one of the spring break days out as a make-up day. I'm not going anywhere myself, but I know several people make plans well in advance for both Winter and Spring breaks...flights, hotel, etc. So tacking on an extra day of school in a vacation like that is going to cause problems. Like I said, I wouldn't mind if they go back to starting before Labor Day...*if* they do an entire week or so before rather than literally 2 weekdays then a 3 day weekend like they used to do.

Cast the green from thine own county, then shalt thou see the speck of blue in Loudoun! (or something like that?)

I kind of get the Jun. 15 mandate, in a way, so that in the event of makeup snow days there won't be classes until late into June. But that also has resulted (in MoCo at least, where my daughter is in high school) in a dramatically shortened spring break this year. It's not even a week long, and I think they might cut one day out to make up a snow day (since MoCo has gone over their limit this year, I believe). Maybe they can get rid of some of the miscellaneous days off or teacher days, etc., and re-work other breaks, I don't know. I also don't mind a post-Labor Day start in general, but perhaps if they begin the year with the last *full* week of August before Labor Day, that would help. I know in the past they used to start like that Thurs. before Labor Day, then a 3 day weekend before you were barely into classes, which seemed kind of useless.

Cue @yoda response in 3...2...1...!

I see your point...and sure, up around NYC the CMC dumps a ton on them. Certainly more than here of course. But I thought you stated things in a bit of a misleading fashion. Your initial statement that "we get some snow but not nearly as much" with no other information made it sound like we get very little. And then the map you post shows the 24-h period ending at 12Z 3/10 when areas northeast of us are getting hammered while apparently showing relatively little here. However, we get around a foot in the 24 hours ending 12 hours before that (ending 00Z 3/10, according to the map Stormtracker posted). I'd hardly call what we get "some snow", just taking the model verbatim. But I guess in the end it's worthless to parse a single model run of the CMC for an event that's over a week out, LOL! Fun to look at though and I like the potential.

Yeah, it's hard to say...one run and all that. Agree that once tonight's coastal is actually out of the way and "known" better, perhaps we'll get a better lock on exactly what the Sunday/Monday event will do. For whatever it's worth, I went back and forth on the 24-h precip ending 18Z Monday, looking back through 00Z last night. Today's 12Z cycle has a noticeable increase in QPF over our region, both in terms of amount and coverage, if you flip back over the past 2-3 cycles (though that big max stripe in the southeast around AL/GA decreases). The low is also stronger and a bit more tucked on the NC coast (it was a bit farther south and off the NC coast at 00Z, and off the Delmarva at 06Z. These may be just back and forth oscillations, but those are the most "notable" things I saw at least at the surface. Hard to say if there's much change at 500, other than maybe some more lifting/ridging of the flow to the northeast in the 12Z cycle compared to the past couple runs.

Don't forget wind...we absolutely excel at strong winds around here!

Kind of agree with you here for the rest of the way this winter, though I wouldn't mind quite as much getting a couple of "smaller" events if that's all we can do. But yeah, my preference would be for one more solid warning-level event (area wide, so we're all happy) with days of fun tracking it. Followed by a couple nice, cold days perhaps. After that, I'd be fine if we're done and bring on spring gradually after about mid-month. I've about had enough 35 and rain days. And am in no rush to see 90s (they'll be here soon and often enough!).

Would that be the red pills...or the blue ones? (Intentional double entendre there, with the Matrix reference)

<Ji>Meh...next!</Ji>

You'll get pummeled while us down here near the metro area will be sucking on rain and mid 30s! Joking of course(?), but it is true what you say about the Euro, for everyone (don't want a low moving that far north).

Yeah, ICON is kind of difficult to get much from...at least on TT, you can only see the 2-m temps, plus freezing/sleet is shown as "rain" on those plots. Makes it a bit hard to assess in these situations. Agree that right near metros is kind of leaning rain according to that, but the 2-m freezing line isn't far away. Crazy to parse it too much at this point, of course. We really need colder air to move in sooner.

That ICON again looks like potential ice/sleet just immediately along and northwest of I-95. Just going by the 2-m temp and precip type on TT (and the ICON shows ZR/IP as "rain"). Can't see what levels above the surface are like. Also, maybe this was mentioned before...but I don't necessarily think our "problem" (at least nearer to the metros) is so much the location/path of the southern low, but that low north of the Lakes that moves east-northeast and whatever front that takes its time moving through. How fast can we get cold air in here as the low to the south moves up toward the coast and can there be enough of a push? The temps actually seem to cool slightly or at least stay "constant" during the precip. Obviously that's all inter-related in some fashion. Probably being master of the obvious here, so sorry if that's the case, but just bringing that up.

Verbatim, the immediate DC area and along I-95 would quite possibly be snow to ice looking at the 2-m temperatures. Yeah, I know, looking at ICON details for an event that far out...but yeah, it's close in the metro areas...and northern tier (maybe even southern northern tier, hahaha!) would get hammered with snow.

FYP...