WesternFringe

Wife heard pingers late last night on the skylights. Warming up nicely now- 50° and headed up to low 60s.

NW of Staunton

24 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

384 hours.

It’s happening!

34 minutes ago, IronTy said:

Very light snow here, no accumulation, not even on my deck.  But it looks nice and is a good end of winter event so I won't complain.  It also gives me an excuse to run the wood stove.  

Ended up with about 4.5” here NW of Staunton.  Mood flakes now and 24°

Went from 37 to 30 in an hour a little while ago.  

30° and moderate snow. Visibility 1/2 mile.  1.5” otg

NW of Staunton

Serious question (and I am not complaining- I am excited about any snow tomorrow):

Why does NWS have Staunton in the 1-2" range on their expected snowfall map, but has a 66% probability that Staunton will get over 2"? 

Aren't those two things mutually exclusive?  They both have the 10:26 am time stamp.  As a teacher of math, I am befuddled by this. 

63 degrees here NW of Staunton

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This is excellent but I’d love to see this done with median! 

You read my mind!  I am going to take each decade's median and run another linear regression to find the line of best fit.

25 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Assuming you coded it, what language and environment did you use? Could you also try and make the graph have a visual component, I understand that depending on how its written that might not be possible. 

I just did it in Google Sheets rather than Excel since I am on a Chromebook.  I will share a link to the document and graphs when I get a little further on.

15 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

We know that snowfall is decreasing in DC and Baltimore. What’s harder to quantify is exactly what impact warming is having on specific events. It’s impossible to calculate because temps don’t act in isolation. Change the global thermal profile and the whole pattern changes and the storm isn’t even there at all anymore. But common sense would reason that it’s hurting us with marginal events most of all. I would bet your stats will show snow is being hurt most along that fringes of where its typically cold enough to snow. Like here!   Get far enough north and averages might even go up as warming causes more precip and it’s still cold enough. 

I ran the linear regression for DC annual snowfall. 

Using 1888 as the starting point, the equation is:

Annual snowfall in DC = -0.07 X # of years past 1888 + 22.9

So, on average DC is seeing 0.07" less snow per year since 1888.  The R squared value is 6%, which means that 6% of the variability from year to year is a function of the passing of time.  Another way to look at this number is that 94% of the variability from year to year is random.

Using 1969 as the starting point, the equation is:

Annual snowfall in DC = -0.03 X # of years past 1969 + 18.4

So, on average DC is seeing 0.03" less snow per year since 1969.  The R squared value is 0.2%, which means that 0.2% of the variability from year to year is a function of the passing of time.  Another way to look at this number is that 99.8% of the variability from year to year is random.

Using 1984 as the starting point, the equation is:

Annual snowfall in DC = +0.17 X # of years past 1984 + 22.9

So, on average DC is seeing 0.17" more snow per year since 1984.  The R squared value is 0.4%, which means that 0.4% of the variability from year to year is a function of the passing of time.  Another way to look at this number is that 99.6% of the variability from year to year is random.

Conclusion:

Annual snowfall In DC has declined on average 0.07" per year since 1888.

Annual snowfall In DC has declined on average 0.03" per year since 1969.

Annual snowfall In DC has increased on average 0.17" per year since 1984.

The vast majority of the variability (94% up to 99.8%, depending on the time period observed) from year to year is statistical noise, or random.

Washington DC has annual snowfall data going back to 1888.  When I get a chance, I will enter in all the annual totals and run a linear regression to find the line of best fit.  By the slope of that line, we will be able to quantify any change in snowfall totals relative to the totals of the late 1880s, or from any point in time since for that matter.

I can then overlay and/or add other cities and do likewise.  It should be interesting to see how the cities may differ or not and what the slope is when starting with different points in time.

16 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 

I don’t have the ability to quantify this accurately. I’d be very interested if someone found a way to model this and went back and tried to use old saved data to project how some historical events would be different in todays temps. Of course maybe we could do that simply for the UHI effects but it’s not really likely to work on a full scale since the temp changes affect the global patterns so the truth is none of those storms would have even existed at all and completely different storms would if we changed the whole temp equation. You can’t just change just the temps but keep everything else the same. It doesn’t work that way. 
 

But to simplify I think everything’s bleeding the wrong way to some marginal degree. Ignoring the fact they wouldn’t be the same events I think in general storms that would have been a 30* 8” snow would be a 32* 6” wet paste bomb now.  Some 6” paste bomb might be a 2-4” slush slop fest now. And what I was a slop fest is now white rain. You get the idea. 

NWS is forecasting 2-3" for western Augusta County and along the ridges of the Shen Valley.  Could be a sneaky day off from school for the kids on Wednesday here.

2 minutes ago, mappy said:

for those who wish to chase snow tv, here you go

 

Thanks!  NWS says 2-3 inches accumulating for the west of my county, so I will happily track.

52 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Yeah I don't remember it melting that fast. Ofc the height of it here was late afternoon I think with the deform band.

I live south and west of most in the forum, so it was over by morning.  Although I do have 1550' in elevation, the temps that day rose to mid 40s and the sun came out in force.  The kids and I sledded on it while it was melting and marveled at how fast 7" could disappear.

15 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

I think I had 14” from that. 

I had 7" here that completely melted by early evening!

I have as much freezing rain as I expected down here NW of Staunton.  Which is nothing!  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  Not even on the thinnest of the most elevated of daintiest of surfaces.  Just cold rain as usual when freezing rain is predicted imby.

So far, the NAM nest has failed for the 86th time in a row to verify with freezing rain here.

Not trying to be a deb, but I hate 33 and rain. Lol 

If you like freezing rain and sleet, I hope you northern/western/elevated peeps get pummeled!  And maybe some snow too! I like all frozen, but I respect different sensibilities.

9 minutes ago, Weather Will said:

WB 12Z 3K NAM:  this starts in the far west/southwest suburbs in the am and moves N and NE during the afternoon tomorrow.  Marginal temps low to mid 30s for most areas but everyone goes well above freezing after 9 am Friday.

In my experience, one can divide the modeled freezing rain by 5 or 10, and it might verify.  I would love to be wrong and wake up to a legit ice storm.

3 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

These types of storms like the gfs is showing don't really need a carving setup in advance. Those are when cold approaches from the west. When something is pressing on top, it can bully its way down as cold air is very dense and confluence keeps pushing and pushing. It's completely reasonable to entertain the possibility of winning next weekend as it's not a huge stretch. That said, I wish we lived further north. 

Yeah, but then we'd have to live further north.   

Rooting for the GFS.  It has consistently been leading the other models wrt sniffing out frozen chances imby this winter.  Granted, it will say 12" to 20" and the other models will say little to nothing, and then it will come back down off its sugar high and show realistic solutions that do verify with like 4"-8".

I guess technically, a model spitting out 0" is closer to a snow of 4" than a model depicting 12", but I will take the model showing a chance of frozen that verifies over models showing nothing.  In this sense, the GFS has kicked the Euro's butt this year for mby.

46/32 nw of Staunton

51/29 here in Augusta County.  Starting to drop

12 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

NAM nest is close to a best possible outcome. 

Depends on where your backyard is, but I know what you mean given the makeup of the forum! 

ETA: I was looking at the 12k.  PSU is right and most in this sub except for our SE peeps would take the 3k

13 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

61/34 on Grounds at UVA.

Hope you enjoy this one -- it's my dream to be in a storm where I'm in the one (okay, two) county(ies) that has a WSW while all the others watch. Live out my dream for me!

Dude, I went to UVa for undergrad and my doctorate.  Someday we should meet for a beer at Basic City or Pro Re Nata or some place in Cville.

Never had a snowstorm that specifically targeted my county before, and I am 46 years old and I grew up in upstate NY.  Counting myself super lucky with this one (IF it verifies lol).

I will definitely post a few pics of my property and the river from my atv if it pans out.

Like Jebman says, I hope everyone gets absolutely demolished with heavy snow.

eta: I actually am feeling pressure to stay up all night and report live, but I am not sure if I am young enough to do that anymore lol

53/31 cloudy here nw of Staunton

Never seen this before.  

Warning for 3-6” with 8” lollis.  I will believe it when I see it, but hoping to get a couple inches otg for the Super Bowl.  I hope everyone’s backyard overperforms!

Looking good for mby and Augusta county in general:

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH SUNDAYAFTERNOON... 

* WHAT...Heavy snow possible. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches is expected, with locally up to 8 inches possible. 

* WHERE...Augusta and Nelson Counties, and Central Virginia Blue Ridge. 

* WHEN...From late tonight through Sunday afternoon. 

* IMPACTS...Plan on hazardous travel due to the potential for accumulating snow on roadways. 

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Precipitation arrives before midnight as a rain/snow mix before becoming all snow during the overnight hours. Snow could become heavy at times Sunday morning. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Monitor the latest forecasts for updates on this situation. &&

CMC has the Augusta/Nelson/Albemarle jackpot and lays 2" on the DC metro

GFS and RGEM and the Euro keep showing the most snow where Augusta, Albemarle, and Nelson counties meet.

Wintergreen should have some powder, PSU, but maybe too small for you?

I live in Augusta nw of the current bullseye, but in the game for an inch or two unless we get a NW bump (towards the 18z NAM dare I say)