ORH_wxman

So you're basically leaning MECS/HECS for a large chunk of the forum....bold call at D5, though it's certainly within the envelope of solutions. I wish there was some decent high pressure to the north though.

Ensembles don't go out that far, but based on the end of the run, it still looks pretty blocky.

EPS says she's not gonna let us out.

Here's a snapshot of 144h....this is when the storm on the OP was over Block Island. There seems to be a cluster near where the OP was...maybe just south of the OP....then another cluster near the outer Cape/ACK...then a lot of Buckshot outside of that

I actually forgot another one....GFS did defeat the Euro in the 2010 Boxing Day storm. That was the other major coastal it scored the coup in. Obviously different setup though.

This has a northern stream diving in trying to capture a southern stream that is running out ahead of it....that's actually pretty similar to Feb 2013....only main difference is we don't have that nice area of confluence which turned that one into a monster both by locking in better cold and increasing the ML frontogenesis. But the Euro absolutely schooled most guidance on that one. Anytime you have complex interaction with two different streams, I feel like that is where the Euro shines....but I want to be careful because we're still on the edge of the Euro's wheelhouse for that sort of thing. I'd feel better if this was 24 hours closer.

I think some conflate posting about a model solution with "Singing it's praise"

Yes, there's def a significant (maybe 20%?) number of members that don't really produce much of a storm at all.

The cliff's note version on that storm was the GFS won in the medium range (like D3-5) and the Euro won inside of 48h.

I haven't seen the GFS defeat the Euro yet on a significant coastal storm for us since it was the AVN model when it scored a coup in the 12/30/00 storm. Even when the Euro barfed in that run with giving NYC 30" in the Jan 2015 storm...it was like 50 miles too far west....but the GFS was still scraping ORH with like an inch of QPF....lol. GFS has really seemed to close the gap on the Euro in non-coastals.

EPS hooks and stalls this east of ACK....that would make the AEMATT crowd very happy.

Yeah my view is that those BL temps won't take away a truly great storm...they might take away a run-of-the-mill warning event though. But truly great storms nuke 2" per hour rates for hours on end....run-of-the-mill warning events often do not...or if they do, it's not for very long. So if we're sitting here putting 0.05" in the bucket every hour cursing at 34F white rain, my view is that we weren't missing out on anything epic to begin with. Yeah, I'd rather have 6-7" of paste than 2" of slop, but I won't lose a ton of sleep over it. At this point in a shitty season, I'm kind of on the big dog or bust train....give me 1.5-2 inches of QPF in 12 hours and I'd take my chances with -1C 925 temps.

I view this as "if you are struggling at 33-34F light/mod snow, then it wasn't ever going to be great anyway"....maybe 6-7" paster becomes 2-3" slop storm, but the lowest 1,000 feet probably isn't going to be the difference between an 18" storm and a 4" storm. Maybe it's a 12-14" deck collapser instead of 18-20". This is assuming that the mid-levels down to 925mb are a snow profile.

Or even 925mb like in the 12/16 event. I really like to look at 925mb...esp in late season events...that was a big failure in a lot of forecasts in the Feb 24, 2010 interior storm (just before the retrostorm that dumped rain) and in the March 2013 firehose storm. 2013 was more egregious because 925 temps were like -5C and everyone was forecasting mostly rain or non-accumulating snow. 2010 was a little trickier, but that one had like -1C 925 temps over the interior and ORH hills got crushed with like 1-2 feet when most outlets were forecasting 2-4 inches.

Keep in mind, wherever you are putting 0.75-1.00 in the bucket on 6 hourly QPF, it's going to be rapidly accumulating snow wherever the profile supports snow. The marginal airmass will matter more when it's lighter. During that CCB that's dropping 2" of QPF over ORH in 12 hours, you aren't going to have many thermal issues....but in the parts where you get like 0.04 per hour stuff, that's when the relatively milder BL and elevation comes more into play.

Yeah I'd think closer to like 8-10" here rather than the 15 on the 10 to 1 maps...and then 12-18 for ORH county to outside 495, though probably 20 burgers in the elevations above 800-1000 feet. They'd clean up big time....Winter Hill scorpion bowls.

Looks like it's pretty damned good outside of 495.

Northern stream is also solidly southeast of the 00z position by 96h.

It's still early (84h), but the 12z run looks more progressive with the main shortwave....so my guess is this solution will likely be east of 00z....but lets see if there are other factors that counter that.

Yeah we should prob stress that in a blocky flow, model guidance could easily change the look enough to matter a lot for sensible wx.

Ironically, Saturday's system would have made a good infusion to the 50/50 vortex, but it's getting crushed so far ESE it never helps out. We're left with the naked trailing ridge behind it with less 50/50 now pressing the heights down in Quebec. In addition, the better Pacific with the big rockies ridge is actually making the northern stream dig a little too much for my liking on some of these solutions. We want it to dig, but not as early as it's doing, but it's responding to the big ridge building out west. All of that in combination is making this more of a needle-threader than you'd typically want to see. There's still pretty high potential in this system, but I don't see a lot of margin for error that we sometimes see in other big dogs.

If that lead vortmax isn't the center of focus, then this will be mostly a rain event for a lot of New England...the northern stream diving in is pretty far west....further west than you'd typically want to see. If there was confluence out ahead of it like Feb 2013, then it wouldn't matter as much, but since we don't have that, this setup is a lot more precarious than I think most in here are currently acknowledging.

Synoptics are bad on that run too...so even though Ukie often has a warm bias in the thermals, in this case, it would suck for most outside of interior hills of NNE.

Ukie is too far north with the ULL while at the same time being pretty weak with that southern stream which floods a lot of warmer air into the region...not a very snowy look until you get into the interior of NNE.