SnowenOutThere

Seems to be right on the verge of becoming a hurricane based on the latest pass. No new pressure measurement so they may have missed the center.

Forgot this whole subform existed till now! Though the recon this morning showed a weaker storm than expected based on IR presentation, it also appears to be on it's way to vertical alignment of its low levels with the convection flares now surrounding the center. Will be very interesting to see if the next recon flight shows strengthening as it flies through the storm; if it does, then we might be setting up for a bout of rapid intensification overnight as I believe that is the best window in terms of wind shear (and diurnal max).

Will caution those who loves the latest CANSIPS pattern. While it looks good for storm track, the heights rising off the East coast give me some pause as we've been burned by a good NAO high pressure linking with the southeastern ridge. Additionally, with temperature anomalies in the Gulf stream being several degrees above average I wonder if the models may underestimate the southeastern ridge. Of course, too far out to draw any real conclusions, but I might favor a further west track than the H5 alone would suggest. Think it might be a big year for the mountains, especially the ridges that will be a few (possibly key) degrees colder. Also think @mitchnick's theory that it will be winter where we might have to be patient and watch a lot of rainstorms that slowly pull the boundary south before we get a limited window to get a follow up wave. That said, I could see a @psuhoffman nightmare situation where we see the boundary be pushed south before getting a perfect track rainstorm with snow confined solely to the high mountains due to just not having enough cold air. By the end of October we should have a better picture as the October NAO negative correlation to winter's NAO is our first real significant one.

Back in Charlottesville. Got to 43 degrees for the low and was around 62 degrees when biking to Grounds. Perfect fall morning weather. Sat outside for a bit before class just to soak it in.

I win! 28 degrees down in Cannan valley this morning. House we rented was on a hill and stayed above freezing, while the valley had pockets of freezing fog and frost. Will find some more pictures from my trip to share later.

New GFS run is a complete cave. Glad this isn’t a snow storm or the 12z euro into 18z gfs would’ve made this place a bloodbath.

Made a PDF report of winter storms from WV during that winter. Looks like some moisture bomb gulf lows translated to major winter storms for the ridges. Should bring some solace to know that even if we completely torch this winter snow, and maybe a blizzard, will only be a drive away. SED_events.pdf Charleston WV even has a map for a January event and notes the cutoff due to temperatures. Not sure I've ever seen a map like this! Look at the VA side, you have the blue ridge in Nelson county picking up over a foot of snow while the valleys had cold rain.

Tipping points are a hell of a drug. The issue is that climate change is of course gradual, the average temperatures trend up over a 30 year period, but to those living it appears as these shocking discrepancies. To the data aggregate it appears as a line ticking, then jumping, up. But to us, climate change appears as a Hurricane Helene, as another heat done over Europe, and as a realization that “it doesn’t snow here like it used to”. The 2016 El Niño and these oceanic processes are our heat transport mechanisms, and when you have major El Niño events you release a ton of heat from the oceans and thus effectively “jump” into the next, ever warmer, climate. It will snow again, we will have a HECS again (it may even be this winter!), but you will also see these droughts where the isotherm has simply shifted too far north for us to reliably get snowstorms. It is what it is.

Charlottesville had the clouds move in right at sunset. Provided some beautiful “hurricane sunset” type skies.

So that's where the high clouds came from tonight!

You (hopefully) know that I respect you as a poster so that post wasn’t targeted at your own meteorological knowledge. You’re the reason, alongside other posters and some professors, I’ve gotten this far. I was responding to the chain of thought of “there’s not much going on” in this thread because, yeah, there really shouldn’t be anything going on! It’s the awkward period of winter forecasting where you can paint big picture but any details won’t be clear. We both know there aren’t great correlations between weather and winter till October at the very soonest, so we really can’t say much till then.

Sometimes I don't even know the joke when you respond ngl. Genuinely no clue how it relates to my post please enlighten me.

A good period of upslope winds made some light rain sit over the area today and bring this event to around 1.3 inches total. Still on the low end, but better than where I was this morning. Regardless, I loved early fall rain and its ambiance, so I made sure to get some pictures while I was out and about. Might be my favorite type of weather behind snowfall. Pictures were taken by me, but some of them were edited by my boss.

I think everyone knows where this winter stands. It'll be above average temperatures, especially in December and it is unlikely we get any real sustained periods of frigid temps, save our conception of how the atmosphere behaves in a strong el nino being wrong. It's also a good bet we will have favorable storm tracks and a very active subtropical jet stream to bring in above average precip. That is all we can really say. We can then formulate that this season will be a boom or bust depending on if we get lucky with a shot of cold air at the right time, but we can't speculate on any details of that responsibly. Anything else is extrapolating or doesn't have much climatological backing. That's it. We now just have to wait through at least October, if not November/December, to watch how the atmosphere couples with the oceans.

.07 overnight with the next batch of rain looking like it slides east. Not done yet but storm total will probably be under .6 if I had to guess. Was really hoping for a nice soaking rain to go on a fun waterfall/river hike over the weekend. Might attempt some form of reanalysis to figure out what happened.