ORH_wxman

MJO is the latest fad to explain a small sample size of outcomes IMHO. We’ve seen it for decades now. - Late 1990s literature blamed the big reversal of NAO/AO to predominately positive phases on CC -early 2010s literature blamed the big flip back to -AO/NAO on CC via melting sea ice - mid-2010s literature blamed the western drought and cold eastern winters in the pacific warm blob due to CC I remember being called a climate denier for being skeptical of the sea ice theory circa 2012 or so. It’s hard to have rational discussions about these attribution studies with people who don’t really care about rigor. MJO is popular right now because “it makes sense” in explaining a small sample of shit winters in the east. To your point, maybe the MJO stuff is true in a vacuum but people are over-attributing the MJO to our own weather. What is going to be the next explanation when we get a couple of cold-loses winters in a row?

2015: “the west coast pacific warm blob isn’t going to magically cool” 2024: “the tropical pacific warm blob isn’t going to magically cool”

Our biggest problem in the past two years is windows of favoribility have been short. Yeah, we also got unlucky when they did occur and we got skunked, but being able to take 4 or 5 shots at a pattern is way better than 1 or 2. The composite of the past 3 winters (if you include this one so far) has put the highest heights over the eastern US. It’s the exact opposite of what you’d want to see to get plentiful chances at snow events.

I agree there was a signal for a storm. You had a thread on it well prior to it becoming very cohesive on guidance. But it was prior to getting a good airmass in here…sort of the leading edge of the pattern shift. Seems our biggest problem going forward is now not being able to time any features together in the longwave pattern to produce a larger scale winter storm…there’s always something mucking it up whether it’s shortwave spacing or the longwave pattern itself breaking down after short intervals of favoribility.

If the goal is just a good snow event, there’s a lot of patterns it can occur in…but ideal or “epic” patterns just make them more likely. The irony about this event yesterday on 2/13 was that it was really prior to the pattern getting good. It was considered gravy if we got anything out of it.

Bluebird sky out there this morning…with strong CAA at least it looks and feels like winter out there today.

It’s going to be a relatively fast band of snow for anyone south of MA/NH border because we’re south of the low track…so we’ll get the WAA burst in front of it and then it dryslots. But yeah, some of these soundings look nice and if they continue to look like that tomorrow, then I could see a quick 2” in spots. But it could also end up a bit shredded if that vort trends a little north. We want to root for that vort to dig a little more

Yeah I’d be a little bit surprised if you didn’t…assuming it doesn’t trend worse in the next 24h like most other systems this year. Too bad we’re all jaded at this point in a shit winter…this is the type of system we’d be semi-excited about if it was progged for December 15th instead of February 15th.

GFS actually has a nice burst of omega right in the DGZ tomorrow night over MA including BOS. I don’t know if it’s correct but that would prob drop a couple inches. NAM has a similar look on the soundings but a bit more paltry on QPF.

Yeah I’m not expecting much from the clipper down here. Maybe an inch or so if lucky. Vort track is pretty solid for CNE/NNE though so someone will do 2-3” with spot 4” up there I think.

Flow goes very meridional for a time so that’s the period to watch imho. Model guidance tends to struggle the most when you have northern stream shortwaves coming out of the arctic where sampling is bad and satellite data is distorted. That’s when we can get those threats to pop out of nowhere at like D5-6

You’ll be right back on the train once the clown maps have you in double digits on the next threat.

Snow has become crunchy under foot as temp is down to 27. Somewhat frustrating storm here as we missed the real goods by maybe 25-30 miles but can’t complain too much considering further northeast got totally hosed…and it was good to see the snow drought areas in CT get slammed. They were due for one.

Actually a lot of longer range guidance tries to reload after about a week. I don’t necessarily buy it but LR guidance isn’t in any type of consensus.

Drove down to Ashland center a while ago and they literally had like 1.5” of compacted glop. Less than half of what I had a couple miles away and 200+ feet higher.

Well done on the bolded. Lol

Classic. Short term busts have become rarer and rarer, but then when one happens, it’s because of CC. No shame at all.

Temp has dropped to 30F. Things starting to freeze solid.

Seriously. Nice clipper event and then it’s teeing up potential for Saturday. Would be nice to grab some events even if they aren’t huge. Hopefully we can time up a bigger one next week.

Metfan is expanding the company as new CEO

Saturday has been off and on, but I think it's mostly off for now.

Barnstable/HYA and over to the eastern part of Sandwich is probably just getting destroyed right now

2/24 has some tepid support in the ensembles....OP GGEM liked it a lot, but thats an OP run....GEFS you can see have a weak signal, but the western ridge is there

Marion CT

Winding down here. About 4” of paste…on the pavement it was more like 3”. At least it makes nice piles.