ORH_wxman

A nice aspect of todays ensemble runs (both GEFS and EPS) is we’re seeing the GOA low retrograding back west at the end of the run. This is something @brooklynwx99 and I were pondering the last couple days. He had mentioned that it should theoretically retreat given the PAC jet weakening. It’s good to see guidance trying to pick up on that. A window longer than 7-10 days would substantially increase the chances of hitting on a major storm threat.

Not at all. Solutions all over the map including some huge hits.

Aside from the 2/13 threat which is precarious, I do really like the look afterwards in the 2/15-2/20 range. Really poleward ridge with cold antecedent airmass over much of the eastern half of the country. Good setup for something higher end.

Yeah that’s squashed. Ridge axis is decently west though so certainly room for it to improve. Gonna either need more phasing with northern stream or more lagging. This run was the sweet spot to basically crush the whole thing south.

Yeah but it prob had a moisture feed from further south once the storm started developing a legit warm conveyor.

Southern stream is def lagging northern stream so far on this euro run at 120h

Yeah you can get close, but you never see like a 45-50” total from any of those 18-24 hour storms. It’s always a stalled monster like ‘78, or 1888 or Feb ‘69 or Dec 1992 (higher terrain). That’s why I mentioned to Ray that the “cap” on a shorter duration storm seems to be in that 3 foot range.

Agreed for the most part but he’s correct if you’re looking to go super high end. How many storms over 3 feet are less than 24 hours? Almost none of them. Sure, even blizzard of ‘78 or Feb ‘69 had most of the snow fall in a 24 hour period but those 40”+ totals are prob like 28-35” if it doesn’t keep going and going. Same deal with those 40+ burgers in Mar 2001. Even in an occluded state, if you have spokes of energy rotating around a pseudo-stalled ULL, it can reinvigorate the snow bands…even if not to their peak intensity…which helps add on those additional accumulations that would otherwise hit the 3-foot wall that we often see in other high-end storms that lack duration over 24-30 hours.

Ukie only goes out to 144 on freebie maps but it looks more like the phased solution of northern and southern streams. Prob ptype issues on that look.

Yep I would like to see that second northern stream s/w dive in and phase after the initial northern streamer s/w outruns the southern s/w. Certainly a good background pattern to trend a sharper northern stream with the building western ridge. We’ll see how it plays out. Canadian is trying to force the first northern stream shortwave to be the main show with the southern stream lagging behind a bit but not enough to ruin the storm. Verbatim a nice hit on GGEM but an unstable solution.

Wide right on GFS. But honestly not a terrible spot for 7 days out. There’s a lot of ways to get that further north.

ICON wants to play ball but more for 2/14 rather than 2/12-13. It lags the southern stream behind and let’s northern stream outrun it and then amplifies the southern stream into the main event. That’s a pretty good look because it creates a better antecedent airmass out ahead of the storm. We’ll see what the real models say in a bit.

I’m in Quincy today and could see the line of clouds just to the west when I left home but then everything got thicker and thicker overcast as I went east. Pretty cool to see.

It would have been a monster storm without CC. I think that is where people get tied up in knots. I mean, there was 50”+ in the 1888 blizzard down at our latitudes (just not in eastern areas) too. So yeah…CC enhanced it, but it’s not like that would’ve been a run-of-the-mill 25” blizzard without it. Atmospheric Water vapor increases about 7% with every degree Celsius rise…so you can do some quick math to see how much extra water we’re working with compared to several decades ago.

It’s inherently tough to “blame” things on multiple causes. Our brains aren’t really wired that way…we want to have a quick and easy one-stop-shop explanation. That’s why you get so many people who bristle anytime you try and assign multiple causes for a weather event or season. As someone who has looked at so much climate data since I started studying this stuff over 2 decades ago, I was already aware of the large swings we see in the past so when we get them in the present, I don’t feel the need to pretend it’s a new phenomenon. It’s easier to break warm records now and harder to break cold records due to CC. Aside from that, I’m usually hesitant to put too much attribution on CC for other weather phenomenon since those are much messier datasets and you lose the robustness of the relationship. This is particularly true for snowfall in New England. Even temps are a bit messy…they increase long term but we see large temporal and spacial variations (I always tell people to look at the 2-3 decade trend in the N plains/Rockies)…sometimes natural variation is working in the same direction as CC and sometimes it is not.

Let’s not get carried away just yet. Start at 3-4 feet and we can always adjust higher.

And yes, there was a pretty awful stretch of snowfall between 1930-1955 at ORH. It covers both sites, but even if you bumped up the totals slightly from the old site prior to 1947, you’d still have low totals in the 1930s and 40s.

ORH pre-airport site is anything prior to 1947-48 I think.

Yeah if you’re gonna separate those two streams, then you def want that northern stream running out far enough ahead so it didn’t suppress the southern stream too much.

@CoastalWx did 06z eps look better aloft at 144? I only got sfc mean…spacing looked better but can’t tell if trough looked a bit healthier or not.

Enough ensemble support to keep an eye on.

I’d be happy with one major (double digits) and one moderate warning event from here on out. I’m hoping for more than that, but realistically we have about 4-5 weeks left starting next week when things become favorable again. Sometimes you can get on a heater and grab a bunch of snow in a short time, but until I see the storm threats lining up, I am not holding my breath.

That was a great system that came way west in the final 48-60 hours. It was almost a whiff at like 84 hours iirc.

Mean has advisory type stuff N of the pike....so that probably tells me there's some decent members mixed with the skunk jobs and cutters. I'm not particularly interested in that threat, but I think there's a subtlety growing threat for that Feb 16-18 timerange. I think if we're gonna pull off something major in this pattern, that's the first real chance. Sometimes the first chance is the only chance too....hopefully not this time.

Snow is still frozen in my front yard despite being near 40F....but it's shaded and the dewpoint is like 6F.