Cobalt

If you're talking about in the cities, our "ideal" setup has probably happened, but perhaps it wasn't maximized. 2 ideas come to mind for me. 1 would be a PD2 2 pronged type system, but perhaps with a stout NAO or just something other than that one-off monster 50/50 low to maintain confluence and to prevent the mid levels from warming so fast, since that WAA was killer, and the areas that didn't switch to sleet easily saw upper 20s and even 30+". The 2nd would be something like Snowmageddon, but with a substantially cooler start. I believe DC got up to 37 or 38 during the start of the storm, and that easily cut down on totals. Drop temps 10-15 degrees and allow for greater than 10:1 ratios on the start, some areas reached 3"+ QPF so naturally, if ratios were better with similar or slightly greater precip, you'd expect a biblical result. I guess you could go off the deep end and assume that a '93 redux further east would do the trick, or maybe a '58 like stall with what the Euro showed for like 2 runs for Jan 31-Feb 2nd last year, but of course in the dead of winter rather than late March.

Not sure what happened here on TT. I guess it's trying to tell us that the picture for our upcoming winter is looking.. fuzzy?

It appears that I should start warming this thread up.. Contrary to our previous desires, the LR outlook favoring a dissipating La Nina was in fact fiction. We're doing what we do best, which is back to back Nina winters! In preparation for a winter characterized by PAC Puke, disjointed northern and southern streams, and of course, the "t" word (especially around Christmas), I figured that it would be fitting to discuss the previous 2 winters that concluded their "snowless" periods. This is of course in hopes that this upcoming winter may very well be the conclusion to our historic snow drought First, I wanted to diverge from chronological order. A second year Nina being the cap to a snow drought is not a new thing. In fact, that was the case in our last "prolonged" snow drought. That winter was 2008-09. It's somewhat easy to see where this winter might've gone wrong. The stout ridge off of Alaska likely didn't help, as the -PNA remained a factor for most of the winter. In fact, the only major event of the winter occurred outside of the December to February timeframe, where on March 1-2, 5.5" fell at DCA, making up a vast majority of the 7.5" from that winter. When researching this winter, one of the other notable events was the cold spell from Jan 15-18, where the temperature was 18/11 on the 16th and 25/8 on the 17th (which happened to be a midnight high). This is hardly notable compared to the average "good" winter, but there were not all too many redeeming qualities, making 08/09 a certified dud. What about 01/02? Easy answer, no. Big AK blue ball of death? SE ridge? No thank you. A paltry 3.2" of snow fell at DCA during that winter, marking the period from Dec 1997 to Feb 2002 as the least snowy period of that length. This would be the case until we'd beat that level of futility with this past winter. One neutral winter, one weak la nina, both duds. For whatever reason, the wake of prominent El Ninos enabled prolonged near neutral to neg ENSO periods, which contributed to both snow droughts. The caveat? Well, when those regimes turned to stout El Ninos.. I might be planting seeds of false hope, but it's always fun to look for greener (or in this case, snowier) pastures. The snow drought we are in reflects the past several bouts of snow "suckitude". Our default is certainly embedded in futility, but that just makes the few years things go right all the more sweet. I'm of course still learning as most of you are, but I figured that this would be an interesting discussion. I do not think that you can make analogs for prolonged snow droughts, but it is still fun to reflect on the repetition of the atmosphere.

Very interesting (albeit pessimistic) thread, but I can't say that I don't agree with the ideas thrown out here.

Wasnt Jan 2019 a 5 inch event for Baltimore?

DCA: 11/15 IAD: 10/23 BWI: 10/23 RIC: 10/23 Tiebreaker: 1.24" Quick question, if one of these winters happens to be a "freezless" one for DCA (might take a while but geez we're close), would a guess for the following year (ex: DCA: 11/15/22) be considered valid? Seems like everyone else's departures for DCA would effectively evict them from the running. Considering the circumstances of that happening.. maybe I'm nitpicking at the little things? Time will tell

DCA having the highest negative anomaly is pretty odd, especially when considering how lacking their cold mins were.

If we're extrapolating from last year's SSW, it does seem like they get somewhat postponed by a period of a few weeks compared to how they are modeled, but that's purely speculative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=961NDc_WZNk

The one Vikings radio announcer who initially called the kick as good will never hear the end of it.

Everything in it's right place

It's interesting that we've viewed March as a "more wintry" month this past decade, when the data you show points towards it being in fact the opposite. Maybe that's due to it being a more volatile month as of late, or even the few torch Marches like March '12 and '20 in the mix, but that's still fascinating to see.

About as much as Short Pump is getting.

Shades of Nov 2011.. Also a second year Nina coming off of a hot Summer.

Whatever you do, don't listen to the quote in your signature.. But in all seriousness, stay safe

Thank you for the kind words! Yeah, the campus is beautiful. I can't wait to see how it looks in the winter months (also considering that we do a tiny bit better in La Ninas here, so any bit helps :p)

Thank you! I'm going to JMU. My dad went into the business school in the 90s so I'm following in his footsteps. Unfortunately the school doesn't offer any meteorology courses, but I'm pretty content on pursuing the business management career path.

I will happily take the rainy & miserable weather over last week. Moved into my dorm and it was a toasty 90F in there by the weekend. Bring on fall!

Usual spots getting deathbanded, no surprises there. Dress rehearsal for winter!

Barely even sprinkling here. Quite the gradient #fringed

I was with you all the way until the last part.

Revisiting this, I'm also pretty sure that it was our coldest month for the three airports in the 21st century until Feb '15 stepped into the ring.. can't confirm right this instant but that's what I remember reading. Decent backloaded winter for sure, but still -climo at the three airports.

This. -EPO is still our most important factor wrt cold in the East (and quite frankly the CONUS as a whole), and from what I tell, Alaska being in a pretty significant cold spell since Mid Jan is a pretty good indicator that we will not have all that much cold available in the East. Just my $0.02.