Cobalt

Since we're on the topic of snowless periods.. how does the early 14/15 winter pattern compare to what we're going through right now? Obviously the pattern we're in has for sure been serviceable, but I'm mainly contrasting that winter and this one because it seems like Feb '15 essentially flipped a switch after a super dormant period with not much domestic cold. I know that was a PAC based shift, but before that from late Nov to late January (outside of the fluke warning level clipper), it was basically a snowless pattern for 60 days, going all the way into what would be the peak climo of late January. What went into that big shift?

Posting this for reference to check in 5 days, but the GEFS keeps muting any cold within day 10. Makes sense right now given no EPO and a fight between the western trough and the -NAO, but here, given that we'll have the EPO to help bleed the cold in, if this look gets muted and warms us up DESPITE some PAC help.. then yeah we're probably screwed. Also a check to see if the progression keeps getting delayed..

Putting on my Weather Will cap but.. PSU v2 storm looks ripe on the snow mean.. as good of a signal as you can get this far out As for the 21/22 threat.. this isn't actually a disappointing mean. We're south of the center of the mean and the 850s are borderline, but we have blocking on our side at the very least. Glad we're dealing with a signal rather than a flicker so to speak.

The high should hold right? Thats why we pay big bucks for blocking Primary goes into Wisconsin and there's still blue over our area, so probably lol

Para GFS does the same split that big brother GFS does, meanwhile the ICON has a progression similar to the Euro.

DT's take on the GEFS earlier today. Interesting seeing the EPS flip-flop with the GEFS as being the coolest/most wintry ensemble now as well.

Here's the ensemble 850 temps during the peak of precip (198hrs) Seems pretty darn borderline, however, here is the same panel at 0z Even with the SER flexing itself ahead of time, the 850s still are manageable. Surface temps aren't the best, but it's still not a bad place to be this far out. This seems like a characteristic of overrunning, no? Borderline 850s and a thump of moisture. Certainly beats looking at a South Carolina bullseye at this length out, at least imo.

Somehow despite the ridging being extra prevalent through hrs 200-280, the 12z GEFS actually looks on par if not a tiny bit better at hr 288 when compared to 6z. Curious as to if a few outliers are pumping up that ridge during that day 10 time. I'd imagine they're doing what the op GFS did from 18z through 6z and are just losing the -EPO?

Control concurs with a decent event. EPS seems to take the snow mean to the north of us, but that's to be expected at this point. With the block we're def in the game, hope that look holds.

Para GFS is super close to a great solution for us.. more expansive cold as well as a larger snow shield, just a bit too North.

Seems like the EPS Control followed this line of thinking.. although it cuts the primary into Indiana lol. FWIW still a healthy signal during that time on the main ensemble. .

EPS looks practically identical to the GEFS through around day 12 (some minor differences from days 7-10). Quite the model agreement there, wow.

The discussion about how that storm would've panned out if it had happened a month prior is quite interesting. I remember the DC area wasted most of the WAA precip as rain, then a fair bit more precip during the day of the 21st when rates lightened up near noon. A redux during the prime of winter would certainly make many here happy.

The axis of cold air intrusion looks rather similar to the 1959-60/2005-06 composite GIF that HM posted on his twitter a few days ago Both post-SSW, both similar Ninas (at least 05-06 and this year, that is).. You can see the similarities to the airmasses below. I see what you did there though

For those who wanted a truly cold airmass, here you go.. quite the signal for cold across North America this far out

I feel like out of any time, we'd need this the most now. Make yourselves comfortable, and perhaps we can go 3 for 3? Keep the good mojo inside the building at all times, please.

Here’s 12z for reference. Haven’t seen 18z yet, but this is a pretty cold airmass, albeit centered to the west of us. Not at torcherrific at least?? .

I think this was mentioned either last winter or in 17-18 by PSU, but don’t bad/crappy winters group into 3 or 4 year stretches? I hope this is just a case where a bad stretch is enhanced by warming baseline temps, but that’s probably the optimist way of looking at it :/ .

Seems like a tiny bleed to the GEFS actually. Not as good of a look as we were seeing on the 12z EPS or 12z GEFS yesterday, but lower heights with the SER. 850s anomaly shows that cold air, and as PSU stated, that -NAO might be what it takes to combat the trough setting up in the west .

Quite the costal signal during that time too. Precip/snowfall means responding quite favorably.

That 360hr look lol, primary up in Illinois and we’ve got blue over most of the sub forum. We seem to have flipped from the GFS showing anything but snow over us but of course it will change in just 6 hours .

18z EPS has a small cluster of those lows off the shore on Thursday (12z EPS had a few but not as many) . I guess considering that if that followup wave happens, it's 6 days out now, but wouldn't the great lake low ruin the party?? The control also had this, which seems pretty close to something other than a nonevent.

It seems like a combination of bad luck + us jumping the gun. From Jan 1st we had known that the best chance of snow would be Jan 15-25 onwards, but a few favorable model runs speeding up the breakdown of the negative PNA had us looking for some gravy before our main window arrived. Some of those looks produced pretty snow means, mainly for the events on the 8th and 12th. Considering those storms as well as the one on the 3rd, it's somewhat clear to see why we've been effectively shutout. Those have all been rather weak waves that struggled to produce much precip or to struggled to pull in any cold air. The 3rd is a decent example of this, and even there it gave upstate PA a modest snowfall while we got a pitiful initial wave of light rain. The 8th was rather suppressed in the medium range, but some runs showed the route in which we could've scored there. Even as you mentioned, without a moderate temp gradient the precip shield was anemic at best and that threat went right out the window. As for Jan 12th that's still TBD, but yet another weak wave won't amount to much for us as currently modeled. Outside of the 8th and 12th threats on the super early Jan ensembles, most members still pasted our region with +5-10 temp departures in 850s and in surface temps through mid month. With weak precipitation that's not gonna do much in the way of snowfall in our general region. Part of me looks at NC and Texas getting decent snow as proof that we're simply dealing with wrong place and wrong time, but who knows. We've certainly punted great patterns before, and in a moderate Nina it seems fitting. Hope our mid/late Jan luck is better, and hopefully if the SE ridge does try to flex itself in, we can wiggle our way to the positive side of the snow gradient.

0z Euro seems to have that slowed down wave idea.. weak/no precip through Tuesday but the secondary wave of precip gets to just south of our area near 0z Wednesday.. not much in the form of anything, but it's quite the trend considering that the 12z run had no precip during that time. Perhaps this is what we want?