WesternFringe

I would create a thread for the ten of us that live out this way, but then we would get predominantly cold rain once again lol.

@Buddy1987is looking like he lives in a good spot for this wave

37 minutes ago, stormy said:

Hello Neighbor!

This should be an elevation event.  I'm telling my many fans to expect less than 2 inches below 2000 ft and 2 - 4 inches from 2000 - 4000 ft. elevation. Its plenty cold for snow at 850mb at -5 C.    Surface temperatures are very marginal for daytime accumulation in mid March at 32 - 35F. unless rates are heavy.

Southward suppression of qp could be an issue.

Hello! I am at 1540’ but have some topographic lifting that helps me and tend to do well for my elevation.  Expecting 2”-5” in my county falling from the sky by looking at modeled snowfall but only maybe 1”-2” accumulating looking at snow depth change maps.  Rates should be fairly heavy considering the whole event is not very lengthy.

19 minutes ago, jayyy said:

If the Albany NY area gets the 12-20” models are hinting at for the 14th storm, they’ll be above 60” for the winter. That would be their third foot plus event in the past couple weeks. My parents are currently located roughly 35-40 miles NW of NYC and are barely in double digits for the season. Another 20 or so miles to the NW in orange county NY, they are above 25” (below average but much closer) NYC is facing potential futility. The Ohio valley over to Chicago has had a rough winter in terms of lack of snowfall as well. The west coast has been getting dumped on as we all know. 30-40 feet on the ground in some areas.

The coastal plain and areas within 50 or so miles of it has definitely been the most impacted, especially up in NE. Niña played a big part, but it also feels like the scales tipping back toward the norm. I can recall plenty of winters from the early 2000s through 2015 where the coast fared better than inland areas during nor’easters due to an overall lack of coastal huggers. I remember plenty of storms where Long Island and SE CT got buried while the lower Hudson valley saw a few inches, despite much better climo. There was one storm where Long Island saw 2 feet and my parents saw 3-4”. Best dynamics were further east and such. CAPE fared better than inland areas in our neck of the woods not too long ago as well. It’s only natural that we see winters where inland areas fare much better than the coast.

It’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what’s going on in a general sense because the outcomes vary so much from year to year. 2010 and 2015 seem like an eternity ago, but they really weren’t in the grand scheme of things. It’s become pretty obvious that we now need a more perfect setup to cash in and that it’s harder to snow via good timing in a bad to average pattern, but we definitely need more data before sounding the alarm too loud IMO. I really want to see what a moderate niño winter looks like going forward. If we can break above climo, all hope is not lost… we just know our down years will be especially crappy. Seems like we’re heading in a all or nothing direction. It’s entirely possible that we could still have winters where we see two or more big storms that put us well above climo, but also see more winters where we don’t break double digits, keeping our annual average roughly the same.

I hope we get at least one decent event before this winter ends. This will still be one of the worst winters ever, but at least all of the tracking we’ve done won’t be for absolutely nothing.

Yeah, my sister who lives north of Albany (Halfmoon/ Clifton Park) is just reaching climo of 60” and is modeled to surpass that easily with the upcoming storms.  Must be nice!

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not bad spacing or bad luck imo. It’s the same problem we’ve had. The wave spacing isn’t working because it’s too warm. So we need some crazy perfect unlikely spacing between waves where they are exactly close enough such that the northerly flow behind one can suppress the southerly flow ahead of Ty next but without crushing it. Ya ok. That’s just not likely.  Waves being a few days apart isn’t the problem.  It’s that the airmass is so blah even north of the boundary where there is southerly flow that as soon as any wave ejects from the west with any amplitude the southerly flow can blast a ridge to kingdom come ahead of it regardless of the longwave pattern.  The storm is then going to track along that boundary that it was able to push way further north than the longwave pattern would historically suggest it should be.  It’s a nasty feedback loop. 
 

The airmass is so marginal north of the thermal gradient I’m not even sure it would matter if one of these did track south of us unless it bombed us with like 1” qpf in 6 hours. Take last night. Places in NE PA like Hazleton at 1600 feet got 2-3” of snow from .45 qpf. Even at 1600 feet it was barely snow with a closed h5 tracking under them!  And places in the valleys like Drums at 900 feet got a slushy coating. So if at 900 feet way to our north the airmass was barely cold enough to produce any snow even with w perfect track for them…what was the likely outcome in DC area even had that tracked 200 miles south?  
 

It’s just too warm. 

Do you think it is cold enough to snow?  Could you clarify?  Lol. Jk

Looks and feels cold enough out here again finally for snow in Augusta County.  Most models and forecasters saying to expect amounts in the 1-3” range.  If I get 3”, it will triple my 1.5” total for the season and I will be ecstatic.  What a winter!

12 minutes ago, Weather Will said:

There have been a group tracking since December, we might as well take the last two weeks and try to keep hope alive for the next two weeks.  I have seen worse GEFS looks over the last 3.5 months.  I always get a little more hopeful when I see a member with a big hit to our south…in about two weeks I will put the snow maps away until next year,  if you don’t like them, ignore them.  Keep your negativity to yourself and have a good day!  WB 6Z GEFS

Looking good for the western (and NW) parts of the subforum.  6Z GFS has 4 waves in the next 13 days that bring frozen out here.

41 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Kinda negative given todays 12z was the highest probability of 1” at BWI all winter. 78% using my combined formula. 

Most folks are 18 times bitten, twice shy!  Lol

I am all in on these waves in the next two weeks, though.  Why not?  It is the best look we have had all winter, so it doesn’t make sense to quit tracking now.

After that, I am out and hoping for warm weather and outdoor time.

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Total from both 

Still drops about 6" here in Augusta County but in a completely different way than the GFS just did.  This will be interesting to track!

Wave 1 for Friday on the 12Z GFS is a 3-5” overrunning event for us western VA folks in Augusta County. Would quadruple mby snow total for the winter!  Lol

8 minutes ago, DarkSharkWX said:

CMC big improvement with western ridging and primary digging more

Yeah, CMC much improved with the ULL pass.  Probably need even souther, but a definite improvement vs 00Z:

2 hours ago, Weather Will said:

I am being facetious, I hope we get something the next few weeks.  I am just going to have to stop tracking overnight until we get a clear threat.  

You keep saying that

2 hours ago, Weather Will said:

Great pattern change….WB 12Z GFS thru Day 10.

Would be quadruple the amount of snow we have had all season in Augusta Co.  I take lol

12 minutes ago, Ji said:

We always crap on models when they show snowstorms in a bad pattern
…like phase 6 lol

Why can’t we do the same when they show rainstorms in good patterns?

Are you okay?

4 minutes ago, wasnow215 said:

In a simplistic manner can someone explain what would cause the OP and ENS to be so different please? I mean it’s not even close. 

The op is like one high resolution member of the ensemble at day 8.  And the mean of all the members outperforms any one member at these leads.

Just now, Ralph Wiggum said:

Where is @brooklynwx99 to calm the masses? He suddenly has gone MIA

He's more into analysis than calming weather weenie lemmings that jump off of a cliff every 200 hr op run.  lol

38 minutes ago, Quasievil said:

...and nearly ZERO here. Welcome to WinTurd 2022-2023.

Mexico gets more snow than most in the subforum lol

19 minutes ago, mattie g said:

I love how we think "What an amazing signal at XX days" when the ensemble snow map shows like 3.4" while it shows 28" in SNE. I mean...what kind of signal would *that* be?

This is a good point and I agree with you, but that map also includes the 5-18" PA, upstate NY, and southern NE are getting this weekend to be fair.

3 minutes ago, IronTy said:

We're really digging deep for some snow.   It ain't gonna happen.  

Like Mappy said, go away, please, if you think it is shit the blinds.

15 minutes ago, Heisy said:

Yes exactly. If eps is right we’d want to see the ULL around lakes progress a little faster east leaving some room for backside trough to amplify. Right now everything is just too far N and not spaced right, we also don’t really have agreement on how the pac energy and PNA ridge evolve. As Ji said it would be nice to actually get some damn blue over the mid Atlantic on one OP or ensemble run


.

But you compared 2 Euro runs a day apart that DO show the energy ejected more quickly east.  I am confused now lol

1 hour ago, Heisy said:

One for the ages. I failed photoshop class, while you obviously earned honors.


Im still right though! Verbatim it’s not an ideal look for the Mid-Atlantic, yet… key word, yet.

If we see changes on upcoming OP/EPS runs that make positive steps to a better winter storm I’ll be the first one on board…

Spot the difference

One is faster with the lower heights moving east?

1 hour ago, alexderiemer said:

this might be the funniest thing I've seen in about 5 years on here.

Did you miss his Hitler meeting with his generals YouTube video?  Hard to top that, but this was funny af for sure!

1 hour ago, Its a Breeze said:

Taken at face value this is illogical and makes absolutely zero sense. Especially given the fact that we've had multiple storms since (and numerous prior) that have been way better....by far.

What are we missing?

One of my favorite parts of this sub is folks arguing about impossible hypotheticals, like giving up 5 years of snow for a March 93 redux.

It’s ridiculous, so my turn. : )

No way I would give up 5 years of snow for one storm.  This board melts down when we have one putrid winter.  Imagine the absolute train wreck it would be in here if we failed for 5 consecutive years bc one poster made a deal with the devil like this that took!

28 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This is just my opinion, but I’ve found they’re not nearly as misleading if you factor in probability and take a mean of multiple runs. Since usually we’re looking at events for long leads with the ensemble I think it’s best to take an average of say 2 days of runs for any one discreet threat or period.  What I’ve noted is sometimes some have a tendency to over weight the snowy runs and forget the non. If a couple runs are snowy and a couple are not you can either say “the guidance is wrong no matter what” which is the weather53 method or you can factor them all in together and interpret that as probabilities were never that high.  
 

not once all winter did the 3” probabilities get near 50% for any consistent period across guidance. And only once all winter did the probabilities for 1” get near 50 and that was when we did get that minor snow and about 1/2” in many places. 
 

You’re right if you simply add up all the snow from each individual run of guidance it’s grossly over predicts snow. But Imo that’s misleading because it fails to account for both runs that don’t show snow or probability which often shows the mean is skewed by snowy outliers and not what is indicated as the most likely outcome. 

“…looking at events for long leads with the ensemble I think it’s best to take an average of say 2 days of runs for any one discreet threat or period.”

Agreed- you make many valid points, but this is the best one.  My comment was more towards how many times daily I have been ‘ensembled’ mapped (NAM’d) to see exactly nothing produce from it.

Also, I am at 1550’ and way further west in a predominantly cutter pattern due to the SER, so ensembles have been accordingly bullish all winter showing much better percentages than you are saying that you have seen.  To no avail.

3 minutes ago, Ruin said:

So my local news weather is suggesting ill be mid 60s fri?

If you read LWX’s discussion, they said they had roughly half of guidance showing 30s and wintry weather and the other half showing 70s, so they split the difference and said 40s/50s.  I suspect your local news station either did the same or agrees with the trend of a NW passing system that brings in warm air from the south.

23 minutes ago, TSSN+ said:

I ain’t over till.. oh wait never mind. 

We have one more window mid-month after the 3/4 hail mary, and after that I am done tracking winter weather and rooting for 70s and working my greenhouse 

35 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

You have to know how to read them. If there is a mean of 3” over 15 days but the probability of 3” is only 25% that does not mean the ensemble is predicting 3” of snow. 

I know how to read them, but okay, fair point, so multiply them by .25- still missing LOTS of snow.  There have been many, many times this winter I have been in the 80%+ probability zone for more than an inch and the 50% to 90% probability zone for more than 3 inches.  I have 1.5” of snow this winter with another 1-2” of sleet.  They never verify this winter, even when showing high probabilities. They have been egregiously useless this winter wrt snowfall, full stop.