ORH_wxman

There's going to be some shifting as the shortwaves get closer to shore and come onshore...and not the just the shortwaves, but other features like the jet streaks that are going to be pummeling the west coast and affecting the ridging, etc.

I don't really think the pattern looked anything like Dec '89 anyway. Certainly not for the incredibly long sustained period that year was. We did have a pretty good cold period late Nov/eearly Dec but it lasted about 2-3 weeks and way less intense. I'm not nearly as much of a fan of ignoring analogs as you are...difference in opinion I guess. Seeing a who's who of past epic snow patterns when looking at analogs of the ensembles in 2015 gave me confidence in a very good period. Maybe you're referring strictly to ENSO though...

Heh....except the historic cold in December....most areas were near average temps in Dec. This February is looking a lot more promising than Feb 1990....but obviously things can still change. We did come pretty close to matching the putrid January 1990.

Agreed....and nobody controls the weather so the whole discussion is really dumb anyway. Most people hate rainy days in general....time for the farmers to get angry at people who wish for dry conditions on a weekend in May?

Honestly, I'd rather have cirrus than cold rain in a vacuum....so can't blame that line of thinking. But I'm also a skier and sympathetic to the ski community, so I would personally rather have a hugger that gives me ptype issues than a whiff and see ski country get buried....but for those who are not skiers, I wouldn't hold it against them to rather have overcast or cirrus instead of a 34F pounding rainstorm.

Are we ignoring the shift west it had at 06z?

00z had a pretty good cluster of lows that was actually tracking over E MA and even coastal Maine. Looks like we’ve lost most of those members and we’ve added more total whiffs.

06z eps are coming in east of the 00z run.

We’ve had plenty of goodies that were 12 hour storms. Last March is an example...heck, 3/14/18 was basically a 12 hour job. 1/27/11 and 2/5/01 were fast movers too. If you get ripping dynamics, you can get crushed in a 10-12 hour storm. Of course, let’s first get this to a point where we are confident of a hit. This could definitely still whiff as the euro eloquently shows us.

First flakes to last flakes could be 18+ but the real snow is definitely shorter than that. Which is fine. We’ve had plenty of big storms that were 12 hour jobs.

Yep. This one ain’t sticking around for 24 hours.

It’s def about the ensembles right now. Especially with all those shortwaves trying to interact. Using OP runs at this stage will make you mad.

Ukie tends to torch the lower levels way too easy in coastals. Kind of doubt youd have 40F rain with that setup over 128 in MA.

GGEM is a whiff SE. maybe scrapes the Cape.

Def a bit pasty. Though just looking at it synoptically my guess is that it wouldn’t be as pasty as the GFS thinks.

Yeah good storm for all of SNE but a total crush job for E MA there.

Big hit for a lot of folks this run.

No you probably don’t want a total complete phase...at least before it reaches our longitude. I think it’s unlikely given the fairly fast flow and lack of downstream blocking but if everything lines up perfect it is plausible. Most of those are probably partial phases of caring degrees which is going to be a good thing for a lot of the forum.

Lol, I wouldn’t say it’s THAT desperate yet. Maybe if it doesn’t improve by Wednesday.

It could easily still end up as an interior job. It’s within the envelope. Especially at 5+ days out. I just wouldn’t be throwing down even money on that type of solution....your Vegas favorites are the eastern ones.

Except for the ones that didn’t. There’s no reason to totally ignore guidance.

You definitely would rather be east than west at this point...the ensembles on all guidance show this. But it can obviously still change...that's just what the landscape looks like at day 6. If you hate uncertainty, then log off for 3 days and then check back in...the guidance will have a lot more confidence at day 3.

Could be 395 too....or 495. Or 95.

That's a pretty reasonable EPS look at this point...I think it tells us a lot in terms of the probabilities right now. You're prob looking at 40% odds or so of something close enough for eastern areas and less than that for western areas.

It wouldn't surprise me if the EC still has the SW US bias....maybe just not as intense as it used to be. I remember looking for more information on newer versions of the ECMWF last winter, but the latest I could find was 2011 or 2012 and it still had the bias back then of heights too low on D+3 forecast over the SW CONUS.