Even in 2015 we had great timing on 2 events…2/2/15 was a would-be cutter where the primary made it to CLE and then hit a brick wall of confluence…so it redeveloped we we got 12-20”….then, less than a week later, we had the Feb 7-9 overrunning event that was like 60F in Philly and DC…we avoided a warm rainer in that one due to some well-timed confluence up north yet again. The south coast actually had some issues in each storm so you can see how it wasn’t that far away from being more tainted for the rest of SNE.
It was a great pattern that turned epic because we got “lucky” on small scale nuances in 2 events. When we’re looking at ensembles, we cannot tell how those nuances will play out. We only see the very larger picture on the longwave pattern.
I think if you’re nitpicking the ensemble pattern shown, maybe you want to see some lower height anomalies in the 50/50 region. But you only need them there when a storm is trying to cut…otherwise it doesn’t really matter