chris21

So... I just made it to Canaan valley... quite an entrance... we rented a Chevy traverse and had a beautiful snowy Christmas drive. However, no fewer than three minutes before arriving at our cabin our dog had explosive diarrhea and projectile vomited all over my gf and the car! We’ve since recovered but... 2020 I guess (the dog is doing fine now, gf is a bit slower to recover but she’s coming along). It is 6 degrees and there seems like 8 or 9 inches of snow with plenty of new powder. It’s still coming down pretty good, tiny flakes.

14 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

My temp never got above 32.  I just went from SN to ZR...to me a flash freeze is winter warlock blowing over my yard and it’s frozen.  We shall see but this is way better than last year when I think it was 65. 

Good point there. I’m in DC and we got up to 35. The CAD holding on until a frontal passage is a much more common way to get a “flash freeze” then this upcoming situation. Have seen a few flash freezes after 60 degree days when I lived near snowshoe but very few in dc.

8 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

This idea of flash freeze is taking hold in the media.  I must see this.  As others have said drying occurs fast 

There was a flash freeze with the last storm.

3 minutes ago, snowmagnet said:

It’s raining much earlier than I had expected based on what I read yesterday. I can only imagine that doesn’t bode well to get a changeover to snow.  I guess the best we can hope for is snow showers on Friday.  

I doubt the start time of rain will have much impact on the change to snow. We want the low to develop further east on the  front or luck out from the upper level energy tomorrow.

32 minutes ago, WVclimo said:

I remember that front in 1977 that WinterWxLuvr mentioned.  We were under a blizzard warning in Cumberland when they let us out of middle school early.  Perplexing as we were boarding the bus in sunny, balmy weather.

By the time I got home, the sky was black in the west, like a wall cloud in summer.  We ended up with a few inches in the valley but the Appalachians scored big.  And the wind was as advertised.

Also remember a frontal passage in November 1995 that dropped some accumulating snow behind the front when I was living in College Park.  Dramatic temperature drop that day also.

The November 1995 cold front is the one that stands out the most for me in Bethesda. I remember high winds, thunder and a dramatic temp drop with 1.5 inches of paste. It was early November (the 8th maybe), I actually lost power for the night.

I’ve thrown some shade... so better make my forecast. Given the wind direction and the depth of the cold, I’m forecasting 8-12 for Snowshoe and Canaan through Saturday. I think upslope will continue into Saturday. 

3 hours ago, mattskiva said:

Mountain forecasting is hard, no matter where you are.  The models generally don't account for upslope and local terrain effects well, and often underestimate precip and snow.  I have spent a lot of time in mountains from Virginia to Maine and from Colorado to the Cascades, and the NWS zone forecasts are never very good.

That said, NWS PIT handled this event well - they issued a WSW for Tucker yesterday for 5-9" and were right on the mark.

Most people here probably know about it, but for those who don't, http://data.canaanmtnsnow.com/ is a great local resource for Davis/Canaan.

Dave Lesher is a great resource as is “the fearless forecaster” who posts on white grass’ website regularly.  When I lived in Pocahontas for a few years the zone forecasts were rough but I feel like Charleston and Sterling had more of a focus on the mountain zones.

6 hours ago, jonjon said:

I'm not sure, but I think so.  Not sure if its going to be super high amounts of snow on Christmas that the need for plows will be real high, just the run of the mill snow covered roads.  Hope I'm wrong, though.

Do you find NWS Pitt has issues forecasting for Canaan valley? The current forecast has no precipitation for Friday (almost every time I’ve visited Canaan in the winter, NWS Pitt has underdone the amounts). Charleston seems to do a better job with Snowshoe.

6 minutes ago, jonjon said:

Only about 6".  But its concrete wet-type, I'm sure the qpf was pretty high.  Very dense snow pack now, should hopefully hold up pretty well against the impending warm up over the next couple of days.

I’m coming in on Xmas day and I have 4 wheel drive (used to live in Pocahontas so am very comfortable driving in the snow). My question is... will Tucker county be plowing on Xmas day?

54 minutes ago, Rhino16 said:

You do think it would start as rain in the mountains, then transition to heavy snow? I have trouble understanding the temperatures with elevation change like that...

South winds warm all elevations quickly... In a northwest flow regime, the high elevations will be colder and snowier than surrounding areas, but there isn’t much difference between the high elevations and valley prior to a strong cold front... everyone warms up. As soon as the winds shift the higher elevations will very quickly transition to snow.

1 minute ago, frd said:

He was a much better read in those days, more balanced IMHO and I learned a lot about tele-connections from him.    

Meanwhile check out the new AO forecast,  yikes !!! 

That’s a good yikes.

27 minutes ago, WVsnowlover said:

Heading there in the morning!

Heading there Xmas

20 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Don’t forget Wentz, snowman, and chris. We need that ensemble consensus 

I was pointing out the same thing as Leesburg.

29 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I am not a DT fan, but I doubt that's exactly what he said. Without checking(because I really don't care enough to) I am guessing he was only considering Nina winters.

He actually said it’s the best look he’s seen overall since then. He references both 2009-2010 and the blizzard of 96 in the same sentence. He didn’t add any qualifiers.

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not our most typical look but it’s worked before

There are a lot of people jumping to conclusions re: H5 looks that I don’t think are necessarily correct. If you read the extensive research PSU has some on the subject, you will find that more often than not... the pattern does not need to be perfect to get snow. In fact, most of our decent snow events do not have all of the following (+pna, -EPO, -NAO, -AO). The H5 looks being thrown out the GFS and the Euro in the extended are very workable, and with a few minor adjustments could really lead to a special period. I’d highly recommend everyone read PSUs research on the subject.

30 minutes ago, WhiteoutMD said:

I remember when the GFS would have a fantasy snowstorm in the long range almost once a day during its daily model runs. Now we can’t even get it to show snow over us in the long range.


.

The ensemble mean is quite high though.

14 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

@ErinInTheSky @MillvilleWx @Winter Wizard

There is a lot of perception bias to this. But I do think globals underestimate mid level warm intrusions and that’s a BIG deal here. That factor alone probably does make us more prone to negative then positive busts. But those do happen also. Only they aren’t usually going to be going from 3” to 12+ at the last second. That’s kinda extreme. DC area doesn’t even get that many of those storms. And most of our negative rug pull busts aren’t that close to game time we just remember them that way. Even this storm the writing was on the wall 48 hours out that big totals were slipping away. We knew. The 1996 storm we didn’t know until 24 hours from first flakes it was going to be that big. It started snowing late evening Saturday and Friday the forecast was 3-6”. Then the 0z guidance shifted way north and Bob Ryan interrupted the 11pm news to say it was gonna be BIG and the rest is history. We knew this storm was going wrong before we knew that was going right!  

@HighStakes there was another storm in Feb 1996 that was a total shock. A miller B that was supposed to develop too late for our area. Night before the forecast was nothing and woke up in Herndon VA to 3” and heavy snow. Ended up with 8” and some places got 12”.  There are some others you can add to the list below. 
 

More recently the Feb 2006 storm wasn’t really locked in until 48 hours out. There were hints on some runs (famously the JMA) but it was 48 hours that the majority of guidance caught on.  And even this it outperformed the final forecasts.
 

Did someone mention the Jan 30 2010 storm?  

The second Feb 2010 Storm wasn’t on guidance until 48 hours out. 
 

A lot of the 2014 storms didn’t appear until 72 hours and didn’t look big until 36-48 hours out. The early march storm looked north until about 48 hours out. 
 

Feb 2015 some places in MD for 12” when the forecast was 3-6 when the storm started. 

Jan 2019 was a pretty big +bust in your area 

One thing I’ve noticed I can’t remember any last minute big busts from a storm suddenly shifting way south.  That just isn’t likely.  It’s not as bad as it used to be but there is still a tendency for big storms to trend north some the final 48 hours.  Add in their underestimate of warm layers and that combo makes up most of our last second busts. 

Early March 2014 adjusted south at the last minute right?

Does anyone remember WXMachine? And if so... how weird was that?

Sleet/rain in NW DC. Temp fell from 34 to 32 in the past hour.

1 minute ago, NorthArlington101 said:

18z EURO says the Northern Maryland folks should stay up late.

^ between 10:00pm and 4:00am

I’ll stay up for wind blown .7 any day 

13 minutes ago, LP08 said:

Still 33...GFS was pretty terrible with temps for this.  HRRRRRRRRRR and Euro have been the best.

We just crawled to 33.1 in NW DC. CAD almost always overperforms away from the river. 

10 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

6” here. Probably 2”/hr right now. 25*

PSU has the best location for snow in MD west of the Allegheny Front. He gets at least 1.5 times as much as Cumberland.

Just now, H2O said:

32.9 and you guessed it. Dookie rain

Better than the 32.1 I have in DC with rain.

Couldn’t be happier to have pulled the trigger on reservations to Canaan the 25-28th. Looked like it might be a torch when I made them.

31/29. Freezing rain and sleet continue in NW.