baltosquid

The issue isn’t that people won’t accept a nice snow of 3 inches, it’s the psychology of that 3 inches always coming from a failed 6 inch storm rather than a trace-1 inch storm that surprised. Obviously that 6 inch storm never existed and neither did that trace storm, it was 3 inches all along. But our window into the future includes visions of those trace and 6 inch storms. Not gonna jump on the misery wagon myself, just trying to explain the frustration. Misery -> panic room

Euro close to something at 114... directly on the heels of this week's event. Edit: Digital snow confirmed at 120, Saturday evening.

Seems wetter DC south, bit dryer to the north. Overall pretty similar but the gradient between south/north seems a bit stronger in the former's favor. Still no big north adjustments as we close in from the euro.

UKMET pretty similar to 12z honestly, 4-6 around the cities (higher end of that by DC), 6-8 in the mountains NW of DC, 2-4 outside of those areas. Seems like a pretty reasonable, less weenie version of what the other models showed.

UKMET coming in now. We're 3 for 3 so far tonight on globals with the GFS, CMC and ICON all putting down half an inch QPF for most of the subforum with enough cold for good ratios of snow. Can we go 4 for 4, and even 5 for 5 with the Euro tonight? Perhaps of more interest at this stage, how do the mesos look tomorrow? Either way hard not to feel good where we are right now.

CMC is onboard with the euro progression of the second wave. Really good run for a lot of the forum. Two waves are closer together and the second is much stronger.

RGEM looks a bit south with the first wave compared to 18z, best precip at DC latitude.

FWIW, the 3km is further north than the 12km.

True, probably smart of them to give it some time to figure out totals for that while the models bicker about whether that second bit is south or north.

Someone with actual weather expertise can probably explain this better than I can, but I believe this giant 500mb feature is the culprit. Our storm rounds that through the Great Lakes, while in the previous run, it was positioned a bit further south and east, so when the storm came round, it was in a better spot for us (still was only an ice storm though).

Seems like a good forecast based on climo for something like this, even if there is some potential for better totals for DC and south.

That's another trend south with the fringe for the GFS, so while it may not be a good run for those SE of I95, maybe the next one will be? Edit: Was mistaken, thinking about the 06z.

GFS coming in drier, a tad south perhaps.

Jackpot of 10 seems pretty reasonable if you get something like the euro. Gut says somewhere in the latitudes between DC and Baltimore gets it.

ICON really loses a lot of the precip from the previous run. Once you get north of DC, you go from 0.5, to 0.4, to 0.3 in Baltimore, and less and less as you keep going. Still a good run to have at this stage if you expect a north shift and aren't looking too deeply at rates quite yet. But dryness is still my biggest worry.

Euro has us in the game for weekend tracking. Ice storm right now though.

What would it take to get that precip shield to expand/strengthen? That seems to be what's keeping this from being great everywhere per the Euro - not that it isn't good already. Edit: was looking at 10:1, kuchera looks much better, disregard!

Euro looks like it wants to merge the events into one marathon.

Don't forget the CMC is coming in now too. Surface looks warmer leading in to Thursday so far. More of a SE ridge.

1049 High on the plains as the ice storm rolls through.

Ice storm... but we're getting there. Give it a few more runs and let's see where it goes. Thursday started as an ice event and it's a lot better now.

Cold air, meet gulf moisture.

Doesn't quite capture every last little bit of snow in the eastern part of the forum, but the GFS thru Thursday looks like a good tick in our favor. Give us one or two similar ticks and most of us should be in a good spot, but it's gonna be a nail biter somewhere regardless. Edit: a few more inches to come on Friday.

SW winds at 850 look weaker on the GFS at hour 60 so that's better, and temps look better at that layer. Precip is further south. Could be a good adjustment.

My biggest worry at the moment isn't south/north but rather lackluster rates and dry slotting like we saw in the thump two weeks ago. If that happens, then we need to hope the Friday shot some of the models like works out, and we've seemed to do poorly in the back half of our storms lately. Would much rather just have a stronger thump than rely on a departing hit. But we're well out of the range where we'll be able to pick out specific regions of lackluster precip so while it's my biggest worry, it's still a small worry. Only really based on how prior storms have gone this winter.