ORH_wxman

Are people supposed to not discuss guidance? I don't understand the ridicule for people pointing out patterns shown 10+ days out....an overwhelming majority of these posts are not making a forecast or saying it will definitely happen. Most of them are caveated with "hopefully we can get this inside 10 days" or some iteration. The worst is people who actually say nothing will change with extreme confidence and zero probabilistic nature to it. Persistence typically fails in the most high-leverage moments....which is why using it is so bad. Take the cold shot for example....yeah, it wasn't a snowstorm, but that cold shot was met with a plethora of "add 20 degrees" or "add 30 degrees" or "it's a complete model fabrication" type posts from the usual suspects....even when it was like 6-7 days out. Well, they look enormously ignorant now.....when the forecast actually mattered in a high-leverage type of event.

Fwiw, GEFS much more Ukie/GGEM-esque in the handling...though not quite as steroidal as those two...they were pretty suppressed looking.

FWIW, there's a difference between OP GFS and both Ukie/GGEM in handling the TPV extension over Hudson Bay. Ukie/GGEM are similar whiel GFS was quite a bit weaker this run with the TPV extension pressing down.

Yeah there is a little front-runner wave there...GFS on a few runs had advisory type snows with it...Euro last night actually had like 1-3" south of the pike. But some models don't produce much of anything.

The same system on the GFS that cuts actually whiffs us south on GGEM.

Funny how ridiculous some of these runs are in the final week of Feb....like 3 different storms. Even though it prob won't verify, it's a good illustration of the way these patterns can be prolific if things break right....we've seen some of these gradient patterns in the past go nuts where you are getting a system every 2-3 days on that fast flow (think Dec 2007, 2008 or Jan/Feb '94 or even Feb/Mar 1967)

Right, I wasn't saying the blocking is due to the 50mb split, but it give it a good chance of sustaining more. I think the initial NAO action is caused by the wave-break around D6....then it gets reinforced a couple times, but in order for it to be sustained into March, that PV split would help.

Blocking is already retrograding some at the end of the EPS....still a ways out, but we're starting to see evidence that we might actually get a more sustained -NAO.

Putting away the snow blower in mid-February in southern New Hampshire…got nobody to blame but himself if he has to dig it back out to deal with a snowstorm.

Good overnight runs. But yeah…long ways to go. At least we’re seeing consistency.

18z EPS only goes out to 144. The front running wave is pretty amped though which is good for sending the boundary well south behind it.

Nothing ever looked this good inside of 10 days since December though. We had some runs that showed decent patterns but they usually fell apart before getting inside 10 days. We did have a couple runs show brief threats in early February but they ended up suppressed and we got a historic arctic outbreak instead with no real snow to show for it.

There’s also a lot of cross-guidance support and a lot of ensemble support within each model…and we know that matters too for forecast confidence. The only inhibiting factor right now is lead time. Inherently day 9 forecasts are going to be uncertain, but this is much better agreement than we’ve previously had on a day 9 look for something wintry…prob since December.

EPS also continues to trend stronger with the east-based -NAO in clown range. This is a good sign because that is what the weeklies were doing toward the end of February…and if you want a fun period for a few weeks, we want the weeklies to verify more or less. Note how in response to that, we see an intensifying minimum in heights over the 50/50 region.

As Tip and I were musing…good luck figuring out the dominant strain in this fast flow…buckshot look on the ensembles. But you do love the look of a scooter high to the north.

It’s a moot point at this time range but the entire system would slide south of SNE if euro went out another panel.

Yeah def not a single defined wave. It also has a 3rd wave in between those two for 2/22. It misses us that run but it shows how many different shortwaves could focus more significant cyclogenesis. We don’t know which one it will be. That one later on in the 23-24 timeframe looks the best but can’t rule out a two-wave idea either ala Feb 8-11, 1994 or Dec 19-21, 2008. Even Feb 7-9, 2015 I think had two distinct waves even though in the OES-zone the snow never really shut off…but elsewhere back in our exurbs neck of the woods in the 495 belt, it did.

I remember that vividly and Scott (CoastalWx) and I were talking about why so much QPF was being thrown inland on guidance leading up to it. We were legimately puzzled because the upper air and mid-levels didn’t really support that type of QPF layout. We theorized that because heights were so obscenely low in that event, perhaps it was giving guidance trouble because the temp gradients and lapse rates were so obscene (hydrostatic models would have more trouble with extreme lapse rates)…but that was just a theory. Who knows the real reason. It was the RGEM that showed the potential bust up there first along with the positive bust down in eastern MA about 24-36 hours before the event. RGEM had its random hall of fame season that year…we joke it was like Brady Anderson’s 50 HR season in 1996….it also absolutely nailed the death band in the Jan 2015 blizzard along 495-ORH-Ginxy along with red flags in western SNE and then nailed the redevelopment and prolonging of the Feb 2nd event that year.

There seems to be cross-guidance agreement on strong confluence and a good antecedent airmass. Those are two things we haven’t had much of this season. So I would agree there is reason to be more optimistic than previously. Still, lead time isn’t inside of 6-7 days yet so we need to cross that threshold.

At least we know who to blame if this trends to shit.

Look at those scooter highs.

If we don’t get a -NAO, a good analog for -EPO/-PNA/SE ridge but a cold gradient pattern is March 1967.

This look has definitely gotten closer than a lot of previous setups. I think I mentioned yesterday this is one of the few nice looks I’ve seen get inside day 10 all winter. The others were back in December and maybe we can count 1/23. Still plenty of reason to be cautious though. You get a couple wrong movements in the shortwaves and it could turn into another cutter, but I do like the trend of the front-running shortwave being stronger.

We used to go in 2001 and 2002 when I was in college. Exchange rate was about 1.55 to 1.60 to 1….it was awesome. More importantly for that age in college, the drinking age was 19 there so those couple years pre-21 were great to hop the border…we were both legal and what little money we had went very far.

We’ve never had any overrunning snow events with a SE ridge and -PNA.