MountainGeek

Same here -- we were forecast to hit 45 and will only make it to 38, and it has been cloudy almost the entire time other than a couple of brief peeks of sun.

So what you're really saying is, expect a juiced wave 1 and amped wave 2?

It did lead the way sniffing out the extent of the warm air intrusion for the Dec storm, so I don't like seeing it come in warmer than the globals....but weenie handbook sez it's just NAM being NAM at this range so nothing to worry about!

Looks tasty -- we're dumping pretty good now, so I think maybe this lasts a bit longer if you're still getting the goods further west.

Yup -- a pretty good win for Winchester. I'm hoping to get one more good pasting out of that outer band, maybe make it to 5". Regardless, snow on snow and a beautiful Sunday morning out there.

30, back to mod/heavy SN, about 3.5" so far....absolutely gorgeous out there

I'm on the Blue Ridge directly east of you, and yes -- never changed over to sleet or FZR here, it's been alternating between mod/heavy and light needles since around 9AM. Currently mod SN, around 8 inches storm total so far.

Does this mean you are staying up for the most important Euro run of the year?

Well it seems to have our Jan 9 MECS a touch slower with the Maine hammer a bit more east....a few dozen more adjustments and we're in bizness.....we have PLENTY of time....

That depends --- does it show blue over you?

Models are constantly being upgraded/improved for overall accuracy, which results in less accumulated error out in time. There have been major improvements in the 4-7 day range vs say 10 or 20 years ago. So in many cases the error isn't "off" as much as it used to be, which means less adjustment as we get closer to game time. That said, different patterns can be more or less likely to shift (the super-gurus here track the known biases of the models and can tell us generally whether the scenario is one that is likely to adjust one way or another). Edit -- and ninjaed by @CAPE.....with the specific pattern analysis....

made it to 10" here, still snowing pretty good...it's a sandwich of about 7" snow, 1" hard crust of frozen sleet/ice, and then 2" of snow on top.....this is going to make an AWESOME glacier for the next few days. Wonder if snowcover can hold through Christmas......

6.5", still moderate SN

A huge chunk of this forum will beat their annual total from last year and we're not even into our prime snow climo period.....I call that a HUGE win regardless of what happens with the rest of this storm. Something GOOD to remember about 2020 at least.....

4" on the ground so far; ripping fatties, viz well under 1/4mi 27/26

Closing in on 1" here - moderate SN 27/25 Since @Jebman said we're getting destroyed, I decided to go ahead and break out the emergency water rations:

Grass/leaves covered, driveway caving, moderate SN 29/20

Yeah on the BR, around 850ft or so.....I promise to take a Jebwalk in your honor. But I'm kind of bummed if this doesn't pan out for a larger chunk of the subforum.....Dec/Christmas storms are rare and a region-wide mauling would be something nice to end 2020 with.....

If that verifies will you come teach us how to shovel snow? No one remembers how to shovel anymore.....

I can offer counseling and moral support if thundersnow terrifies you .......it looks like we have a shot at some interesting dynamics out our way......

Of course --- NWP never verifies when it shows good for us, but modeled bad setups always verify 100%! IIRC, this time last year we had exactly that: no idea that we were heading into an epic dumpster fire winter. NWP and most outlooks were calling for a great winter with lots of potential. Signs looked great going into last winter, and that turned into a disaster. So maybe things look terrible going into this winter, but there's still plenty of time and luck for the reality to turn out at least mediocre (which would surpass last year) or get us somewhat close to median.

Going straight for the kill shot I see.......not even giving @WxWatcher007 a chance to have fun baiting the poor weenies for a couple of months before they succumb to the final plunge of despair.

Here's a pretty cool ENSO - snowfall chart from Josh Timlin; this clearly illustrates many of the ongoing discussion points, especially in terms of setting general expectations for the upcoming winter: https://www.joshtimlin.com/enso-charts-winter

Posting for historical reference when the winter ends up giving us "decent" median amounts -- let's go ahead and get rock bottom out of the way now! Although @Maestrobjwa might just get his wish of widespread pain and suffering along the entire east coast. Ben Noll put together a "blend" of global winter snowfall anomalies from the ECMWF+UKMET: https://www.bennollweather.com/ecmwf

He thinks "climo" snowfall for the East coast is a poor representation of ground truth. One big storm can literally be the difference between a great "anomaly" year and a total dud. Lately we tend to be more boom/bust, so we could easily get 3 crap years, then one big year. So maybe an area averages out to 30" a year, but the reality they should be expecting is 10", 5", 20", 15", 70" vs complaining when they don't get 30" every year. PSU has hammered this point as well - a 15" annual average leads to the unrealistic expectation that we need to get 15" or better to be a "good" year. Median would be a better approach than the mean (which is skewed by the occasional HECS or big winter).