NorthHillsWx

Congrats mid Atlantic folks. I’ve been lurking and enjoying y’all’s joy this week. Send some love our way after the pattern resets!

Front has come through. Down to 47.7

Temp shot all the way up to 56 despite a forecast high of 49!

Yea I’m trying to stay as positive as I can but it’s tough given the past 6 years and all the hope El Niño and analog years brought. At best it seems we’ll be lucky to get a storm to track. That’s way off what most thought where the idea was the active STJ and suppression of SER would lead to multiple opportunities. I mean it’s going to be mid February and we haven’t even had a threat to watch inside 5 days. Gonna take a high end event to salvage this year at that point

Here’s the problem: that pattern change, assuming it happens, and assuming isn’t kicked down the road, means at a minimum we are burning the next 3-4 weeks of winter. We cannot afford to burn 3-4 weeks of winter when it’s already January 19 and everyone’s snowless. Been hopping into the MA forum. They’re having quite the week. Two over performing systems and sustained cold. Just a different world down here. It’s currently 52 out and long range GFS drives some 50’s into central Minnesota to begin February. This winter can kindly move along at this point. I’m sure it’s primed to give us 30’s and rain as we move into March

I’d take 0.10” of freezing rain and call it a season at this point

This forum has become ungovernable

Oh how the taste of defeat stings. Yes, the pattern did flip and yes, the cold did come, but unfortunately we lost the blocking and the SER and PNA wrecked us. What looked like a cold second half of January turned into a cold 1/16-1/17 and 1/20-1/22 followed by a huge warmup late month. Coupled with the STJ just shutting off once the cold arrived, this period (though well forecast by models as being the period to watch) did not produce and was not as cold or as long duration as what it had looked like just a week ago. I know those in the Tennessee valley got it good, but east of the Apps, this entire period was severely disappointing

While I do agree with this, for snow almost always, with the tools we now have, you can at least nail down a time period a couple weeks in advance where players will be on the field for an event. It doesn’t mean we can tell if it will snow or predict the sensible weather on a specific day that far, but you can tell that, if everything works in our favor there will be a chance as we get closer. The flip side to that: we can also tell very far in advance now when the players needed for snow will not be present. Years ago this wasn’t possible to the extent we have now. However, I can look at models and indices and say with 95% confidence and accuracy whether or not there is a potential in the next 2 weeks. Sadly, there is absolutely nothing that shows 1) cold source 2) pattern change during that period. That’s why this board gets so negative is we know snow is hard to come by as is, and when we’re halfway through our snow season and looking down the barrel of certainty that all of January and the start of February we will be blanked, we are now only relying on hope that something will change in the long range (with nothing but analogs really pointing towards anything good).

For what it’s worth, the GEFS looks worse than awful the entire run. Op in perfect alignment, lol

RDU is funny. I’m sitting at 22.6 while they are reading 27

Looks like our high topped out at 37. Wasn’t sure we’d get much past freezing but the full sun did its trick. Down to 36.5

Kinda feels like we’ve got one shot left. We burn that first week in February we are definitely running out of time

Only up to 30 as we approach noon under full sun without snow. Impressive cold

I’m between 4 and 5

Pretty impressive lows considering there’s no snow cover

The next two weeks would suck a lot less if we’d at least managed a coating or anything from Dec-Jan. I hate burning January.

Currently running below most nearby sites, 17.1 out. Picked up 0.20” of rain yesterday. High of only 40.1 EDIT: 16.7 was our morning low

Thank you! So, if we end this season without measurable snow, it would be an exceptionally rare occurrence that we had two snowless seasons in a row

This isn’t scientific, but illustrates the struggle for snow lovers: 2018-19: 1 event (December, ~7” changed to rain in afternoon) 2019-20: 1 event (February, ~1.5”. Didn’t stick to roads) 2020-21: 1 event (January, ~2”. Didn’t stick to roads) 2021-22: 1 event (good storm. 3-5” from triangle-east) 2022-3: blanked 2023-4: blanked (so far) RDU averages 5.9” of snow per season. Our total cumulative snowfall over the past 5 seasons just barely hits that mark. Totals aside, unless I’ve forgotten another minor event in there, there have been just 4 events over the last 6 years in my neck of the woods and none of them featured a season with multiple events. It’s the first time (I believe) in my life (born in 89) that we have had a snow drought this substantial for that duration

The Appalachians are a powerful force… Temp is dropping quickly here now. Down from 39.6 an hour ago to 37.4 now

@GaWx since I have no idea where you get your data, how many times has RDU had two snowless winters in a row?

You can go ahead and say no measurable snow in 10 of 32 now

Fixed it for you No one expects wall to wall cold, that’s not the problem. It’s purely that we simply haven’t had many cold shots and have had well fewer than normal opportunities to track since December 2018. We just spent 2 months discussing a pattern change that led to this week which clearly wasn’t the cold outbreak we expected. With 70’s showing up next week and the next chance at wintry weather looking like February at the earliest, it’s pretty safe to say that 2/3 of our best wintry months will have been wasted. And before anyone tells me it can snow in march, I DO NOT CARE. Banking snow in march is like playing the lottery here. Heck, in our new climate, past Valentine’s Day seems almost impossible. If this was year 2 or 3 of the snow drought, yea I’d be gaslighting. But year 6 and this is feeling like less of a drought and more like the new norm. It sucks but that’s where we are at

We (anyone outside of mountains and south of Virginia) are cooked. Looking at burning 2 more weeks of prime climo with nothing showing besides historical analogs and LR pattern analysis. Seriously, there has been so much time spent over the last month analyzing what will turn out to be 4 below normal days with a warmup for next week.