Cobalt

11F, -SN. Perfect conditions for the dorm fire alarm to have gone off and send everybody outside..

11F with -SN. Larger flakes starting to pop in with the pixie dust. Seems to be go time! Might be the last time I see bare ground until the second week of February, kind of incredible.

The rates right before the flip would be very nice. 0.1-0.2" QPF in an hour, probably some huge silver dollar style flakes before the changeover

16 degrees in Harrisonburg

GEFS is pretty enthused at this range

Before the upcoming cold snap.. DCA currently sits at 37.7F for the winter, 21st coldest winter since 1970 (arbitrary cutoff), and 0.7F below the 1981-2010 average. That figure is most certainly going to drop, but I'm not sure it can be overstated in how potentially prolific the upcoming cold snap will be. 12z GFS' raw output for temps at DCA has the 24th-31st averaging 17.6F, which would be the coldest on record for that time period. For a laugh we can take the Euro's output from 2 days ago (the most recently accessible chart on the weathermodels site) to find that it has DCA averaging 12.2F for that timeframe. The Euro has an obvious cold bias with snow cover and IIRC has backed off a bit from that ridiculous number, but all of this illustrates how potent the upcoming cold will be. The "tamer" solution still challenges the coldest last week of January on record.

Digital snow hall of fame potential if it kept going past 240. Kuchera shows 32" falling in 6 hours lol

Incredible similarities between the surface and h500 depictions on both the GFS and Canadian at 192 hours.

Seeing the SREF and NAM not super insanely amped (just regular amped) with the WAA is a bit encouraging. In similar borderline setups they've loved driving that initial precip well north of us at range, typically comically so. I guess that implies that the airmass and associated confluence are legit enough to shunt out those solutions from the usual suspects.

Many of the analog events had surprise winners from the front end thump. Folks brought up Feb 21, 2015 as such an instance. Feb 16, 2016 is another good one, that had brutal cold leading in.

Looking back at the Feb 21, 2015 storm someone mentioned in the other thread.. woof, quite the boom. Let's hope a similar thump is in store this time around, but area-wide. Accompanying article for anyone interested https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/02/22/the-meteorology-behind-saturdays-multiple-choice-winter-storm/

More confluence out ahead, slightly weaker ridge. Nowhere near that ridiculous 0z solution yesterday.

Despite the atrocious look out west, the phase is a tad sloppier. That combined with the improved thump puts down 0.8" QPF in DC before sleet enters the picture.

Just going through the memory bank of similar WAA-driven events, I recall how amped the NAM suite was for the Dec 16-17 2020 junction. Their first runs at range scoured out any cold air at 700/850mb well to the northeast, an extreme NW outlier. They were the first warning signs for that event, and while the other (less amped) guidance didn't completely cave to their long-range looks, they did conform to its depiction of warm quickly scouring out the relatively weak CAD signature. That makes me wonder if the 12k NAM isn't completely off its rocker with its current depiction.

slight decrease since 12z, certainly cant hurt, though probably related to timing differences also.

Record low hunting next Tuesday?

Northern stream is running out a good bit further ahead than 12z, which I assume is a good thing

Genuinely absurd temperature output by the Euro after our system. I get that it can be overdone, especially with snowpack, but even if you add 10 Degrees to every low temp it says DC hits single digits 3+ times this upcoming week. Would love to see the City charts from weathermodels if someone has access to that, it's a frame-worthy output.

Your standard 10/-11F day in DC as forecast by the 12z Euro. Call me skeptical but I don't think we'll see DC's 3rd ever subzero daily average.

Sure, why not

Looks effectively identical to 0z's output, though definitely subtracted a bit East of DC.

10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will?

Wow, this clearly shows that record highs have been outpacing record lows at a near 4:1 or 5:1 rate since 2020. Even at the apex of record highs in the 1930s the ratio was only 3:1 at max. Chris Martz is incredibly agenda-driven so that is likely why he didn't accompany this graph with one showing the ratio of high to low records, it would've dismantled his entire argument. Instead he has to rely on big scary numbers and his audience's lack of critical thinking, which is a pretty easy thing to bank on.

0z drove the primary into Buffalo so this is decisive improvement.

It's not the GFS, that's for sure.