Scarlet Pimpernel

5 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Euro is going to be too warm in the mids for the d8+ potential. It's more of an ice setup than good snow. However, considering the significant changes we just saw for d5'ish, confidence beyond that is even lower than it's been. 

I'm looking at the not very detailed maps on TT and see what you're saying on the 850s.  The 00Z also has us losing the mids with what looks like a primary that tracks west of us and never totally dissipates in favor of the coastal.  Similar thing to what the new 12Z shows, I guess...again, going off the limited detail on TT...but 12Z shows more coastal perhaps, and the high appears  more entrenched too.  Now, I don't know if 00Z also had us in more of a mix or ZR vs. snow, but at any rate obviously dissecting such details this far out is not worth it.  Just trying to see differences, etc.  Like you mentioned (in a slightly later post below), a ton of ice is probably not the most likely scenario here, but verbatim would be interesting.  And it shows just how strong that high is even if the mid levels get bullied out.

1 minute ago, Bob Chill said:

I like the multi wave/boundary progression on the euro. Light snow verbatim but there's 2 embedded features that have potential. I can see how this misses south too. Not saying I think it will but these setups are narrow. Nice new development on guidance today and fits the things that PSU has been talking about IRT MJO/forcing etc. Models are in fact playing catchup. Not a surprise. At least not to me. 

Yes...like the trends we've seen in the past day or so.  To be honest, I wasn't even looking at or thinking about this weekend, focusing more on middle of next week.  But this is quite a change now in the next few/several days.

1 minute ago, BristowWx said:

still the best...waiting for a "DC crushed"...can never hear that too much 

You hear that very often during football season! 

9 minutes ago, frd said:

When you can grab the pebble from my hand you will have learned grasshopper ........    Hey.... I am dating myself right.   I bet you know where that line is from   

Well, that does sound familiar, though I cannot quite recall the show it was from (so perhaps dating myself too, haha!)

There's of course "Karate Kid", as well:  show me wax on, wax off...sand the floor...paint the fence...side-side.  Yes, Daniel-san, only when you master these, will you get a true HECS! 

19 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Reporter: Yoda, you've just won the first 2 billion dollar powerball in history, how do you feel?

Yoda:  Decent 

11 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

You got the hang of it. 

Very good!  But perhaps minus 1 point because he used "Yoda" rather than your usual "Yoder"! 

13 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

For sure, but this year seemed like it was as likely as any year to produce a HECS. The hype just seemed off the charts. You couldn't find a forecaster predicting anything but above normal snowfall around here, and comparison to 2009-2010 with a loaded second half, and then the weeklies all looking amazing for that timeframe. And then this is what we get. It's kinda like asking Santa for a new sports car and walking outside and seeing a used 1998 Kia in the driveway.

I totally get the frustration and disappointment thus far this winter. I'm sure those experts and others who put forth thoughtful long range predictions of above normal snow, and saw the same promises in the long range guidance, are just as exasperated. It's been a rough season for anything medium to longer range. 

But I do have to make a couple of comments on what you say here because it seems a bit unfair to me. While there were many bullish forecasts, I don't recall any of the more experienced posters making comparisons to 2009-10 or promising any HECS this winter. Yeah some hype and excitement perhaps at previous weeklies. But I think a bunch of other posts in here got overly weenieish and perhaps made some assumptions about what was being said. And "as likely as any year to produce a HECS" doesn't mean much because in any year the odds of such are not likely anyhow. Not only that, but we can easily score well above normal snow around here without a HECS. Just look at 2013-14 and 2014-15 for example. And this year the DC metro area scored a solid 10-12" event a few weeks back...not a HECS but a great moderate or better storm.

So let's see how it pans out through mid-March or there about. No, we may not get the Ferrari this winter but I suspect we'll end up better than a used '98 Kia. Perhaps along the lines of a newer Honda Civic. 

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

After we all took a night off I woke up to all those panic posts then looked at the actual guidance and was wtf.  

Same here.  I read through the stuff yesterday afternoon that looked quite good.  Checked earlier this morning and saw only a few additional posts, mostly saying how the 00Z suite looked like crap, etc., etc.  Then read what @showmethesnow followed up with and also looked at some of the ensemble stuff myself and thought "dafuq is going on in here?!"  Thank goodness for those who offer more level-headed and reasoned analysis!  I didn't get the dumpster fire posts.  Now to be fair, the way even the ensembles (at least the GEFS) have jumped around every 6 or 12 hours doesn't lend a lot of confidence in the ~d10+ range, but I still didn't get the cliff jumping.

33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea I’ve been on the edge of that. I bet they got it good because I’ve had intermittent huge flakes on the edge and it’s probabky dumping good in that band.  

Round-about way of indicating you were...dare I say!...fringed?!   I jest, of course (honest)!  I did see that elongated band headed right for Westminster on radar, looked pretty impressive.  Nice day and a nice little event for sure!

Right around 1.5" today.  Great little event that was a lot more than I anticipated (expecting a dusting or so).  I'd say this was perhaps even better than the same amount I got Tuesday, simply because it was cold powder that stuck to everything right away.

Just now, psuhoffman said:

Since that is a specific threat now does it belong in the other thread or here still?  Honestly asking because I am not sure.  

Just now, Bob Chill said:

I just moved my fantasy banter thoughts over there. Someone needs to make a rule book and a road map to this place nowadays. 

Well, maybe there's been some fantasy banter thoughts...but that is a threat window that has been showing up for a little while now.  Not that it matters what I say here per se, but seems too far out to consider it a "specific threat", it's still kind of longer range right now and could disappear anyhow.  So discussion of that "window" here to me would be warranted...until it actually becomes a legit threat.  Six of one, half dozen of another, I suppose.

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

I developed an Isotherm decoder ring. Just scanned his enitre post (without a dictionary or thesaurus) and you know what my ring says? It says the gefs sucks with the mjo and get your shovel ready cuz it gon be yuuuuuge

Well...as long as it doesn't translate to "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!"

Did we seriously just get NAM'd by the Euro? Relatively speaking of course! 

11 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Cleveland probably has significantly more snow days but I get bigger storms to keep it close. Being at ~1050 feet helps a lot.  Especially when that’s the highest elevation in the area and the first ridge that gets hit with a east wind...coastals can can dump here if they track close enough. 

You are spot on about Cleveland (and northeast OH in general).  They do have more actual snow days simply because it's colder plus the Lake effect (even if it's light).  With the right flow, you can get at least flurries nearly every day.  But what I've noticed in all the years I grew up there and now living here for the past ~18 years...is that a storm of 12"+ in Cleveland is really quite rare, at least on the synoptic level (Lake effect is a totally different, and localized, animal).  Until I moved to this area, I *never* was in a 20"+ storm.  Not once.  I now have seen four of them starting with the PD-II storm in 2003 (first real storm since moving here in 2001).  Add in a couple of 12"+ events on top of that through that time.

Even with some far more dangerous and severe winter storms that I've been through in Ohio, you don't get the same prolific QPF producers in the midwest that you can with coastals, of course.  Though we occasionally did share in the outskirts of major East Coast storms there (the 1993 storm is a prime example).

(ETA:  There's also the fact that winter in northeast OH is noticeably longer...you can get legitimate snow from early November through early April most years.  I don't know how many years the Indians had their home opener snowed out!).

12 minutes ago, pasnownut said:

I dont care if the control run goes batshit for the next 9 days and we end up with 3-6" at this juncture. #beggars

If the control run...and every single other model...goes batshit crazy for the next 9 days and that storm happens like shown, then we can guarantee a Cleveland Browns vs. Washington Redskins Super Bowl next year! 

(ETA:  or maybe it would be the Detroit Lions rather than Washington...)

Just now, Ji said:

Woah....so much for the circle of death

That's a big change from even just yesterday, isn't it?  Or was that the Euro's forecast I'm thinking of?  Either way, yeah, there were a lot of members going into the COD but also many pushing into 7 at that point.

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

My average snowfall for the 11 seasons I have lived in Manchester MD is 45.4"

My average snowfall for the 15 years I have lived in Carroll County is 41.2" but that includes my years in Westminster which gets a decent bit less snow than Manchester.  

I tried to use coop data from the area to compile a climo going back to the 1800s and I found using the closest available coop in any given season with reliable snowfall data that the local average was about 38".  But I live on the top of a ridge at about the highest elevation in Carroll County in the northern tip of the county at about the snowiest spot in MD east of the Catoctins.  So all the coop locations I was using get less snowfall than me by 3-5" a year so I would guess the long term snowfall average here to be somewhere around 41-42".  I suspect the 45" average for the last 11 years is skewed by the 101" I got in 2010.  That will skew a small sample size pretty significantly! 

A better idea of "what to expect" is probably my median which is 35" meaning in any given year I have a 50/50 chance of getting more or less than 35". 

My variance is a LOT less than DC area

In my 11 years here 6 fell between 33 and 54".  2 were above that and 3 below.  Historically a significant portion of the winters fall between 30 and 55" with an equal minority falling below or above that range.  But I would say a winter in the 30's or 40's is typical here with above or below that being a very good or very bad year.  

Didn't realize your average was that much!  Thanks for the better context, and as I suspected, the variance from year to year is much less than it is out this way.

Actually, your average is surprisingly not extremely less than KCLE (my home town), really.  I think their mean annual snow is 55-60", some of that is lake enhanced.  Of course if you go east and southeast of the city it increases dramatically due to lake effect snow (100"+ in the heart of the snow belt...yay Chardon in Geauga County!).

8 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Oh, and also the odds of the control run verifying are lower than the Redskins having a winning season next year. 

Even the Browns have a better shot at a winning season than that!

But seriously, that was a nice run even if the control is way out there extreme.  It is nice to have some signal for the post-frontal snow and another opportunity shortly after.  And cold!

3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

That's what makes it so believable. Might put my shovel in the shop tonight and tune it up. 

Send it to @Jebman...I'm sure he can have it tuned up in perfect working order, and overnighted to you in time for that!!

30 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@Bob Chill  On other thing probably influencing my skepticism, I am not comforted by the fact that when I looked at warm neutral years that match our current pattern drivers...just to see what we are dealing with if the nino inst really having the atmospheric impact we want and the results were pretty grim.  On top of that... a few years popped up that had the very rare characteristic of years where the DC area actually did better wrt snowfall than my area.  That only happens like once every 20 years...yet a couple of those years like 1980 show up in the limited set of warm neutral analog years.  Oddly what the set seemed to indicate is the DC area is likely to have a mediocre to good snowfall year...but my area is a total suck fest.  I don't necessarily mean from a pure number but wrt climo.  If my area and DC both get 20" that was a top 20% winter for DC and a bottom 20% one for me.  That seems to be the MO of some warm neutral winters with other similar characteristics like PDO and QBO.  Hopefully Isotherm and others are right regarding the pacific taking on nino characteristics soon because the analogs say warm neutral gives me what I have had so far...total crap.  

I see what you're saying here, and agree it's a matter of perspective to an extent.  20" here in metro DC would be looked at differently simply because it exceeds climatology.  But then again, your climo is (I believe?) about double that in DC.  I would guess the variance from year-to-year is notably less, too.  In terms of absolute amounts, a "meh" winter here is nearly always totally craptastic, as it implies probably getting < 10" or even worse, low single digit amounts.  And there have been plenty of those.

So then we get into subjectivity.  Yeah, we got lucky with the 10-12" here in the middle of a "blah" pattern where things happened to work out.  But if winter ends with a couple more dink events that just pushed us over the mean, I don't think many here would consider it a good winter all the same.  Especially if it's mostly warm with weekly flood watches outside an event or two that gives us a sloppy 1-3"/2-4".  We'd feel lucky to get that one event, though, to be sure.

Now, if that one event was, say, like Jan. 2016...that would be viewed differently of course because that's an historic level event.  But even still, I know a few in here said they thought that outside that event, 2015-16 sucked (even though, other than the record warm Dec. 2015, the rest of that winter was a bit colder than normal for Jan-Feb).  On a related note, I think a lot of people didn't much care for 2006-07.  Certainly not the first half.  But to be honest, despite the fact that we didn't get a lot of snow in the end and just missed on the V-Day storm (getting sleet and ice instead), I actually kind of liked that winter because it was very cold from the end of January into early March, and there were opportunities in there too.

I think expectations play a part, too.  Not long ago all guidance was pointing to a great period for winter weather, and prolonged at that.  Then suddenly, things got uncertain or even not so great looking and we feel that now we have to try salvaging something.  Though there are also indications lately, I guess, that it might not be all bad and there is improvement indicated.  So I'm sure many are feeling a letdown because we seem to have "lost" that great potential that seemed so likely.

32 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Was just pointing out what the 06Z GFS was showing. There was no hoping about it. Now if you want to talk about hoping, I am hoping that the NS energy dives underneath us and we get a KU. And while I am hoping I might as well hope to win the Mega Millions as well. Because the way this winter is going I would probably have better luck with hitting on that.

Nah, you had a good explanation on what the 06Z GFS was showing in the framework of that one model run.  Made sense, and was interesting because normally we don't look at things like 850/700 mb vorticity.  It was a very subtle setup, which I suppose could still happen or at least come and go in the models.  Even it is low probability.

As for winning the Mega Millions...I think you have an ulterior motive, wanting to win that in order to pay off Vegas debts, am I right?! 

31 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

For all we know the transformation to acceptable blocking is coming to a theater near us soon.

Well, let's just hope it's not a box office flop!  Otherwise Ji will be calling this the Ishtar of winters! 

@psuhoffman...Many thanks for that detailed explanation, appreciate your efforts and the plots to describe what was going on in 2015 (vs. currently).  Definitely shows how it can work if you have that similar look, but also it's amazing just how lucky it was that we pulled things off in Feb/Mar 2015.

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

Sorry I wanted to answer this sooner but had to teach some 16 year olds the difference between monetary and fiscal policy first.  If you think having to read snowstorm321497024632q0498732 is bad you should try that!  

I admit, I LOLed at this pretty hard!  So true!  It almost makes one wonder what snowstorm321497024632q0498732 would write in a paper explaining the difference between monetary and fiscal policy, if he were in your class.  Wait, on second thought, that would be a very poor idea...I don't think I'd want you subjected to that!! 

8 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

So whats up with the feared pattern change back to Pac puke that had many here in a mini panic a couple days ago? 

Barely a blip on the guidance now. Muted. Not happening. As a few of us predicted. 

Whistling past the graveyard, are ya?? 

@psuhoffman...There's been some discussion of the WAR and whether anything can get that to move out of the way, e.g., if we can finally get some kind of -NAO to boot it out.  Question I have for you, if you remember any details of this offhand...how did we get Feb. 2015 to "work", so to speak?  Not suggesting these two situations are the same, but as you know that winter kinda sucked until close to Valentine's Day, then we had like 5 weeks on the heater (or extreme cooler, as it was!).  I don't recall any -NAO to speak of that winter (or the one before, in '13-14), but we had a favorable +PNA/-EPO.  I seem to recall the WAR was killing us in Jan and early Feb of 2015 before we finally got things to go right.  Was the PNA ridge just simply in a better location then?  I can't remember the other nuances of that season.  Just curious, trying to find out ways things could potentially work for us at some point the second half of this season, at least hopefully.

20 minutes ago, Mrs.J said:

This cold weather has put me in a comfort food mood. Just made fried potatoes from scratch to go with breaded pork chops tonight. 

Mmmm, sounds tasty!!