Scarlet Pimpernel

2 hours ago, 87storms said:

yea that dry slot was unexpected and pretty annoying.  i was right on the edge of the cutoff, so i stayed in the light snow and dendrites for most of it, but i could see where dc would be a frustrating spot.  the UL action made up for it here, though.

You're probably not all that far from where I am (seeing that you list Bethesda as your location), and I had a similar experience riding the edge of the dry slot.  It lightened up for several hours after about 8:30AM, but never completely stopped.  I had 17" on the ground around 8AM, then got a couple more during the time it was lighter.  The CCB then came through mid afternoon into the evening and hammered us for like 5 hours at ~1"/hr rates on average (I ended up with 24" total; 5" fell in the CCB action).  No complaints from me on that storm at all.  But it is interesting that barely 10 miles farther up from me in MoCo, they got ~30" or so from reports I saw...they stayed in the heavier stuff for the pretty much the entire day.  The bands in the afternoon, once they finally moved in, were quite wicked!

11 hours ago, RDM said:

Ahhh....  AMC.  Renown for building some of the fuggliest cars in history.  Remember the Pacer well and boy did it have a lot of glass.  One of the biggest windshields and rear glass of any car even close to that size you'd ever see.  Don't recall any other car that had a passenger's door that was 4" longer than the driver's door.  I had some friends in HS who had to drive one.  The social embarrassment probably left deep scars for years to come.  It was right up there with the AMC Matador and Gremlin...  

 

Haha!  I actually remember someone in high school (early-mid '80s) who had a purple Gremlin.  Yes...purple.  He got a lot of flak for that car, but he made fun of it himself, too ("you must be from the west side of Cleveland to have a car like that", etc.!)!  My sister-in-law had an old Chevy Cavalier years ago that ran, shall we say, inconsistently at times.  She used to call it the Cadavalier!

2 hours ago, leesburg 04 said:

Yeah seems the LOTFW ensembles have performed best lately! 

13 minutes ago, Fozz said:

I think that was Feb 2015. But yes, great storm here.

9 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Dammit. Second time i've done that recently. I got a tablet for Christmas and i've been too lazy to stick all records and data from my PC to dropbox. I've been leaning on memory a lot and I aint no spring chicken so memory is getting fuzzy.  Lol

I really loved that event. Broke a big rule of thumb with vort/slp track. SNE can do well often with a nw track. Here? Nasomuch

Was that the one around the 20th of Feb in 2015, over a weekend?  We had extremely cold antecedent air leading into it.  It was like 10 degrees out the morning that hit, and we got warning-level snows and some ice even as the low was in what is normally a very unfavorable spot for us to our west.  But it took so long just to warm up to freezing, and the mid levels held on for quite awhile, we scored a decent snow here.

(ETA:  'd by Fozz, looks like that indeed was the same storm!)

So, seems like there's a bit of a "WAR" going on between Ralph and PSU. Hopefylly it will be a cold one! 

3 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

I think we gust to 50 around DC with sustained at 25-30 for  hours. Who has the date of that arctic plastering frontal squall from several years ago?

Feb. 14, 2015...yes, literally Valentine's Day.  Front went through on a blast of wind and those snow squalls.  I got about 2" from that in the space of an hour or so.  Though the squalls were not wide-spread...several areas got little or nothing...depended on where you were.  The following day it was still windy and in the teens.

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

lol thanks...but check this out.  The GFS just misses the boat here...the NS and SS vorts don't phase and instead the NS acts as a kicker...but look what could have been...and the flow on top is not that suppressive this can definitely be a monster that runs the coast if there is just a little bit more coordination here.  Somewhere between the GFS and the GGEM is a monster snowstorm for us.   Either way this look on the GFS would almost certainly correct more amplified and west.  I am more worried about rain then OTS att.  

 

You're talking about that wave coming down out of Utah and the 4-corners region, correct?  I was looking at that too, it's close there to phasing with the SS near the Gulf.

5 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

It's going to get better.  I think it's a pretty decent bet that we get this follow up wave now.  

Yeah, for some reason the "follow up" wave next week seems to be more likely than the one we were hoping for this weekend.  Obviously some differences between the two cases, and the thing next week has support from several models at this point (whereas this weekend, it showed up on a couple of runs here or there but nothing consistent).

ETA:  But one way or another we need that front to go through the region before the wave gets up here of course!

2 minutes ago, yoda said:

Or let Ji see it

Unless it shows 30"or more for his yard, shouldn't let Ji see any model!  And he still might not be happy! 

1 minute ago, yoda said:

SLP looks a lil strung out at 162 on IWM... but seems to have a lower pressure near HSE

Looking at TT, it appears the main low is in the Gulf around 144h, then comes up to the FL panhandle area.  But appears that it comes in "discrete" pulses, though there is a main center of sorts.  Looks like an interesting time, if that cold front actually goes through in time and there is SS energy to rotate up toward us.

Maybe about an inch or 1.5" for the event.  It was very pretty out earlier this morning!!

Reduced to hoping for a few flakes as the Arctic air rushes in on Sunday!   Well, that and perhaps still having a few piles of what's on the ground now still left over.

1 minute ago, Bob Chill said:

My first trip to vegas was in 1994. I was in my 20s and didn't have a lot of money but a group of 15 of us stayed at the old school Sahara. Of course I lost all the money i brought but it was a total blast. Well... a blast until i flew back to Denver and got to my car... I had a neat option with keyless entry so i always locked my keys in the car so I didnt have to worry about my keys. Which works fantastic until you leave an interior light on for 4 days and it kills the battery. So i sat freezing in the outer airport parking lot for over an hour waiting for a locksmith. When i say freezing i mean it was like 5 degrees outside. Lol. And I didnt have any money so.... I had to leave my suitcase, wallet, and watch with the lock guy as collateral and drive 160 miles round trip the next day to get my stuff back and pay the guy. Lol. What a disaster. 

Man that sucks, in a sort of ironic twisted kind of way!  Sounds like something out of that movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" (Steve Martin & John Candy)!!

I've never been to Vegas myself, but my brother has gone a couple of times.  He (and others) said it's one of those places you really need to see at least just once in your life.  Just to experience the lights, casinos, whatever.  I don't know how much he ever won or lost, but it wasn't much either way from what he said.

Somehow reminds me of the first time I went to New Orleans, with a friend while in grad school (was in Atlanta at the time).  For years, my dad had pestered me that I should visit there, telling me what a neat town it is (he had been there many times when he was younger), and especially since I was relatively close to go there.  While there, I called him from a pay phone (yes, pay phone...had no cell phone in the mid '90s!) and said "Guess where I am right now?" which I think had him slightly concerned so when he asked where, I said "I'm looking out over the Mississippi River, sipping a beer!".  To which he replied "Ah, so you *finally* made it to New Orleans!!"  I didn't even have to mention the location, he knew.  I agree with him by the way, a very neat town and very unique!

1 hour ago, showmethesnow said:

 

Thanks for thinking about me. Once wife gets me out of debtors jail I will be flying back.

Flight gets in tomorrow evening so hopefully any ice can hold off till we get home. Will be nice to be tracking once again. Just never found the time between my bouts of losing money. 

Well, as long as you don't have to come home in a barrel from an unsuccessful venture in Vegas!! 

But seriously, safe travels, and hope you had a great trip!  And here's to having some good tracking once you're back in the area!

9 minutes ago, LP08 said:

Now wouldn't this be sumthin'

Ha!  I'd laugh if that happens, as temperatures fall into the teens or low 20s at the same time!  Talk about making good on lemonade right there...

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yes to the 30 from Feb 10...but it was only about 25" here from the Feb 5 storm.  The miller b on the 10th was just perfect here... Manchester was under that crazy heavy band of WAA snow that set up along the mason dixon line the night before...before the coastal even started to form...and I had a few hours of the heaviest snow I have ever seen.  I had 12" from that in like 3 hours.  Then when the coastal bombed it was a perfect wind trajectory for the upslope enhancement here...heavy snow just kept going all day the next day.  It was at least 30" but it was very hard to measure...wind was crazy, blowing things into just amazing drifts.  I had pictures of snow up to roofs around town.  Some of the people around me put down more than 30 but I have no way to know for sure...it was a sh!t ton of snow...that much I know.  

That 2nd storm Feb. 9-10 was damn near impossible to measure accurately, especially with all the other snow from a few days prior and with it blowing around all over.  I marked down 12.0" where I'm at, but that might have been a bit of an underestimate.  At least I saw a few other nearby reports on the order of ~14", so my measurement (such as it was) was in the ballpark anyhow.

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I had 30 thank you very much!

I suppose my recollection of the exact amounts "fringed" you with only 25!! 

Just now, snowmagnet said:

I know it's possible, but I was wondering if it is still showing up on the forecast maps for next week. 

I see...sorry if I misunderstood what you were looking for there (thought you meant "last week of January" in general!).  As for whether sub-zero temps are still showing up for next week, I don't know at this point.  Maybe some areas?

16 minutes ago, snowmagnet said:

Are the below zero temps still a possibility the last week in January?

During the extremely cold month of Feb. 2015, DCA cracked into the single digits for lows in the middle to later part of the month.  BWI got close to zero, and IAD actually did record a below zero reading in the second half of that month..  So yeah, I don't think it's impossible to get sub-zero in late January (not that it will happen, but you get the idea).

14 minutes ago, MillvilleWx said:

We barely got into a Blizzard? lol

Ha!  Yeah, I woke up to barely white-out conditions with 40MPH wind gusts through much of that day, and barely recorded a foot of wind-driven snow!  To be fair, there was a sharp cut-off close to northern VA I think, but even those areas got some solid amounts.  And even DCA got over 10"!  Granted, central and northern MD scored best with like 15-25".

13 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

MLK weekend event thread started. Voodoo dolls and witchcraft or whatever else you can think of to avoid all rain would be good. 

Just remember...don't mess with Jobu.  It's very bad to steal Jobu's rum...VERY bad!

Just now, PhineasC said:

I agree. The infamous back-end snows often disappoint, but I can recall some cases where it surprised everyone. The models will not be able to get it right until very close in. Zero chance the GFS and Euro have it figured out now. They are still moving the major pieces hundreds of miles every six hours.

Yes, those are generally not worth hoping for, but they do happen upon occasion (not saying it will here, though would be nice of course!).  What we'd really need (require?) for that is a trailing piece of energy along the front after it passes through and we're in the cold air again.  And hope the front doesn't move so fast that any secondary wave is pushed too far offshore to affect us.

25 minutes ago, mappy said:

i saw your tweet about that. i wasn't in the Baltimore region for that storm but recall it being messy. 

It was indeed a big mess over the entire area.  I think areas farther west in MD/VA/WV got decent snows out of it too.  It was very cold leading into it, and despite the low center going well enough to our west (as I recall?), we never changed over to rain even in the DC area.  We got a bit of snow, then all sleet...about 3-4" worth.  Areas east/southeast of DC (Annapolis, etc.) probably had it worse because they ended up with more freezing rain rather than sleet.  The whole thing then turned into a block of ice for the next couple of weeks as it remained quite cold for the rest of that month.

27 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

And I will have to charge my research grants for all this furlough time so I’ll have less time to do the work I’m supposed to do.

But, but...it's all like a vacation, isn't it?? (that was serious snark there, by the way!).  This is the one thing I think a lot of people don't see or perhaps don't get.  When the shutdown ends, it's not like you just go back to work and move on like nothing happened.  There's a ton of sh*t that is backlogged from the past 3+ weeks.  If you've got experimental stuff that was running or whatever, that may have failed or otherwise data may have been lost because nobody is there to keep an eye on it.  Stuff that I would have normally done around the beginning of the month may not still be there to recover when I get back.  And on, and on...

30 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

Same.  Getting more and more stressed about all of the crap virtually "piling up" on my desk.

Amen!  Almost as bad as not working/not getting paid, it's been in the back of my mind how much stuff I'll have to recover from when this is eventually over.  Some things just simply may be lost.