kgottwald

What is with every Friday afternoon being blustery and turning colder? Are we stuck in some kind of infinite loop?

 . . . and again with the damn clouds.

Aren't we going to get a 100% sunny day anywhere in this mild pattern?

Another "sunny" day derailed by unforecasted clouds. Bah humbug.

23 hours ago, Siberian-Snowcover-Myth said:

 

That looks just like my elementary school, if you replaced the playground equipment and asphalt with trees and grass.

20 hours ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Here is a chart with a lot of information if you want it, https://xkcd.com/1732/

Makes me wonder how common snow was at the site of DC in the decades surrounding 5000 BC.

10 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

the high elevations of NC basically have a similar climate to areas hundreds of miles to the north.  It's wild.

I'm wondering, if Florida had a mountain range with 10,000'+ peaks running down its spine, how would that affect the climate? Would there be a rain-shadow and if so on which side? How high would the snowline be at Miami's latitude? Would we have a domestic coffee industry?

A LOT of clouds out there on what was supposed to be a sunny day - the models always miss that on the day after a substantial rainfall it will nearly always be cloudy in the afternoon.

Every single damn Friday afternoon/evening, with the screaming NW winds . . . every one! What is it with this pattern?

The folks at CapitalWeather speculate that we might be on track to beat January 1950 for pure blowtorchness.

All anyone remembers about 82-83 is the general mildness interrupted by the 2/11 storm - everyone has forgotten the 6-12 inches on December 12 (after a truly tropical first few days of the month), the additional inch a week later and the 4 inches on 2/6.

I have two notifications that people replied to my posts in the Mid-Long Range discussion thread in Mid-Atlantic. Neither reply is actually visible in the thread.

Did the moderator remove them for some reason?

On 12/26/2022 at 11:22 PM, pazzo83 said:

lol

Remember 2004-05, when Brownsville, Texas got a white Christmas but the DC area had to wait another month for its first measurable??

National and Dulles couldn't even manage two consecutive sub-freezing high temperatures. Busted the forecast by 6 or 7 degrees IIRC. Kind of pathetic if that's all we're gonna get.

1 hour ago, George BM said:

Very true. I'm actually talking about the lows areawide in general though. Ex: IAD forecast low was 7F. With wind we'd usually end up at ~9F give or take a degree (courtesy of mixing). I'm just happy to be fully performing with something other than heat lol.

IAD's all-time low of -18 on January 22, 1984 was a result of perfect radiation conditions: calm wind, snow cover, no clouds. DCA only dropped to 3. The afternoon highs reached the mid-twenties.

Dewpoints really falling off a cliff

Interesting that IAD obs never reported snow, just rain, drizzle and mist.

First snow of the season in Tysons

Front passing through Tysons Corner just now. Sudden burst of sleet.

On 12/20/2022 at 9:24 PM, Terpeast said:

I was checking daily temps and precip data for IAD and DCA for the 85-86 winter, which was - and still is - my top analog for this winter. 

It was very back loaded, and it didn’t really get going until the end of February, when it got most of its snow. It was quite cold wall to wall, but had so little to show for it Dec-Jan.

I can only imagine what this forum would have been like in a winter like this. 

That was the year when all the TV mets promised a white Christmas. December 24 was 58 degrees, but it was supposed to start raining in the evening and then switch to snow, piling up 2 to 4 inches. But whatever primitive Neanderthal forecast models they were using back then were less accurate than flipping a coin. The cold air never arrived and we got zero snow. Bitter disappointment!!

On 11/29/2022 at 9:30 PM, poolz1 said:

Your mention of Bob Ryan made me a bit nostalgic . Anyone remember Gordon Barnes?  Felt like he was a radio meteorologist in the 80's.  Remember clearly listening to him forecast a storm 3 days in advance..."30% chance of snow" we ended up with 11" of powder.  No knock on Gordon...just a sign of the times. Play it safe until its not safe. lol 

Gordon Barnes! That takes me back! He'd give his winter predictions in November, usually calling for a cold, snowy pattern, and he'd *always* say we were going to get a white Christmas. I don't know how he came up with that stuff, probably pulled out of his ass.

After three or four years of disappointments, I got pretty annoyed at him for continually raising false hopes.

This weather reminds me of the then-record-warm December of 1984, which had a considerable number of mild, foggy nights.

Temps rising with the wind picking up - a minor Chinook effect?

And I certainly hope that this is the latest in the year that the DC area will ever see 70-degree dewpoints.

A patch of blue sky in Merrifield about 15 minutes ago.

Despite the predicted upper 50s lows, temperatures have stubbornly refused to drop at all since sunset. Even Dulles has stayed in the low sixties overnight.