Cobalt

Haha there's just a bit going on over the next 7 days

Yup, seems to be less confluence pressing down in Maine vs 12z. That's after the previous two runs strengthened that piece of energy. Seems like most of 18z guidance has halted the southern slide for wave 2, so that's good news at the very least.

Yeah, that's just about my take from the 18z suite so far. Yesterday the prevalent trends were that the initial wave was looking substantially weaker, but also at the same time then the secondary wave wasn't a sure thing. We're pretty certain that wave two will paint a stripe of snow somewhere, I guess it just comes down to if those waves overlap each other in location or not.

ICON is something like a 2-3" deal for this weekend, at least for the general DC area. Hard to tell fully because it's obscured by the last event, but will be easier to see when surface panels come out.

it's also substantially better with the 2nd wave. Probably not worth much because well yunno (it's the icon), but this looks pretty significant.

Is the NAM the only meso showing those substantial mixing issues for the initial wave? All panels (850s, 925s, etc) are a fair bit below freezing from EZF north, yet it still shows 0.1" QPF worth of sleet. Regardless, 0.3"-0.5" QPF for a good bit of the area for wave 1 on the NAM.

GFS and Euro swapped places for Monday lol. But yeah the core of the cold is definitely sticking to our west. Handling of TPV is going to cause some chaos for sure, but still seems like the stage is set for multiple frozen events coupled with at least some cold, even if not arctic.

1041hp isn't pressing down as much as 0z, but the setup still looks super intriguing. Will take that at day 6+ leads.

didn't know March '58 stepped through the door on the Ukie

Just throwing my $0.02 out there but as Bob and others have suggested (and what we're already kind of seeing it with wave 1 based on guidance), I'd imagine the storm consolidates a bit. I keep referencing Jan 12-14 2019 as a similar setup, but putting everything that happened with the storm other than duration aside, I recall models suggested that precip would stick with us until something like 06z-10z Monday, when in reality precip shut off like 12hrs+ sooner. I think it makes sense too, we're not sitting here with a stacked low sitting motionless offshore pivoting light bands of snow into us like last week's system did. The one takeaway I got from the 12z suite was that there seems to be an overlap of both waves, but other than that the totals for the entire event seem pretty uniform for a good chunk of our subforum. Still a pretty great way to kick off this stretch of wintry weather for sure.

For a model that has no visual indication of precip other than snow or rain, it really wants us to get a mixed bag lol. Although its run for Saturday has more merit, since other guidance has a similar solution.

ICON has 0.3"-0.5" QPF fall this weekend with temps in the low 20s.. awaiting surface panels to see if it's an icy mess or not.

FWIW

65:1!?? That's kind of insane.

18z continued the trend of a weaker wave 1 for a more consolidated wave 2. Not able to post pics right this instant but (speaking for DC), wave 1 dropped .2” less, but the costal dropped .1-.2” more through hr 90. Seems like the storm is beginning to appear more consolidated on the models. .

Hey, at least in this addictive hobby, you're safe with sharing that you spend multiple hours a day looking at models on your computer screen. Well, some people here boast about both types of models, but that's a different story

Check out the h500 heights for that on the GFS/GEFS compared to the Euro/EPS. Those are wildly different solutions with significant effects downstream lol. This seems eerily similar to what exactly happened for the midweek event back on Friday/Saturday when that system was a similar range out. The SE ridge definitely looks like it'll end up being much weaker than it was depicted at that range, so we'll see if this system does the same. I recall PSU mentioning it as a bias at 5-8 days out, but this seems somewhat different with the TPV causing the changes in how strong the ridge is.

That actually just seems to be from wave 1. A decent slug of precip/snow falls (at least according to the GFS/Euro) after 0z Friday, and that runs up until 7pm Thursday.

ICON and GFS look just a tad different at hr 120 lol. Surprised it stays mostly ice with a track like that, I guess it shows the strength of the CAD we're dealing with.

Ptype panels arent out yet on TT, but it looks like it's NW compared to 12z. Gets the immediate area into some precip at 84 but the run ends right there. Comparing hr 84 to 78 on 12z shows how the axis has shifted NW.

RGEM looks better for the 2nd wave FWIW. Seems like that's been the most notable thing from the 18z suite so far.

ICON follows this idea. Overall .2-.4" from wave 2 compared to maybe like .1-.2" for the general DC area from 12z, but less with the overrunning. Still favorable trends for sure. 0.6"+ QPF from DC southwards.

Seems like guidance is moving to this. Wave 1 has trended drier/weaker across the board with wave 2 looking like it has a bit more potential. I was actually thinking about you and how this setup seems awfully familiar to the Chill storm 2 years ago. Obviously not the same look at h500 but a similar progression with the storm starting off with cold smoke overrunning.

Acceptable

DT seems pretty excited. Either that or his all caps method of typing makes it seem like he's yelling every single word