WinterFire

If I had to guess, I'd say part of it is sea surface temperatures--if the Atlantic is warming, it would make it much more difficult to get cold and stay cold in the costal plain. Unfortunately since that's global warming-driven, there's not much we can do about that. But would a northern-stream dominant flow also have an impact? I.e., are systems required to dig more without drying out too much (which seems to have been happening with nearly every storm inside 72 hours), which makes any set up pretty precarious? Maybe it's grasping at straws, but that is something that (hopefully) doesn't stick around forever, and wouldn't necessarily imply that even moderate snow in the DC-Baltimore area is just shy of a lost cause...

I don't know if you were following them up to the Snowquester...debacle...but people were really upset about CWG's forecast bust. Back then they were describing the forecasts the way you suggested (they had DC at 5-10" and low-medium confidence). Their post-analysis is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/snowquester-when-forecast-information-fails/2013/03/07/5d0d77ae-873b-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_blog.html I think after this "storm", they changed their approach to try to be clearer about what a busted forecast might look like. I think the bigger issue is that the public isn't interested in trying to understand the forecast but then will take it out on the mets if the forecast they internalized was wrong...

But isn't that what they're doing? They say in their text forecast and their graphic that they expect 4-8" in DC. Then they add information about uncertainty which is an important thing to do in public communication, no?

I saw a couple of things from Twitter mets this morning: It seems like there's a couple of features that are still moving around (although the trend isn't really our friend for the CCB snows), so maybe all is not said and done? But this storm does remind me of the Jan 2005 storm in DC--we were supposed to get a major winter storm, and got pretty decent WAA snows, but then the phase/capture happened too late and PHL north got a good storm but our WSW was downgraded to a blowing snow advisory. But as others have said, it's our first snow of any kind in years, so I'll take what we can get...

Thanks! I'm trying to learn more how to parse the upstream differences in model runs, so this is very helpful. I guess one question is would a faster movement of the backside vort prompt a negative tilt in the GFS progression or help it to slow down and close off south of our latitude? Though of course "it is never one thing" could really be the motto of this hobby, so I'm probably trying to oversimplify here haha

Thanks for pointing this feature out. I've seen a few Twitter mets mention it as well, so I'm wondering if that accounts for all or most of the GFS/Euro divide, and not necessarily the strength of the main low or it's position? In other words, is it fair to say there is reasonable (maybe not complete) agreement across guidance for the main UL low until it gets off the coast, but that guidance diverges when handling whether/how the backside vort interacts with the UL low?

FWIW during last October's ice storm in Oklahoma City, the temperature never got below 27, and that was a pretty massive storm (I think almost an inch of accretion?). Not saying that will happen here, but the temperatures don't need to be quite as low as some posters have suggested. Anyway, not a new poster (been lurking for years) but figured if I could add some Southern Plains ice knowledge, why not make that my first post!