SnowenOutThere

Absolutely great list. I personally like the sunny days within 10 days of the winter equinox as you get a very pastel sun/light which is very good for landscape photography compared to the more harsh summer light.

Since this sorta stuff often ends up in this thread I'll put it here too

While we all wait for the Euro I made a fun thread that reminds us why we actually do this hobby! Please add your own contrabutions!

Thought it was time for another fun thread! Curious to know what everyone's favorite thing that happens in the sky. Of course, we all know the basic answers of snow/severe but I'm hoping to get some more in depth answers. For example snow squalls or orthographic events instead of just plain snow! Personally my favorite meteorological events are Hurricane Sunsets/Sunrises due to the upper anticyclone spreading out high level cirrus wave clouds which capture the sun extremely well to get brilliant sunsets. A non meteorological pick would be Blood Moons as I just think they're neat to be both predictable/easy while still really cool. Visual examples of my own work for each!

I wouldn't quite call it cold cirrus. Maybe slightly above seasonable cirrus?

I bet the euro doesn’t even make 150,000 dollars a year

Can feel the sun already this morning. At around 80% coverage of sleet but expecting that to fall off today. My guess for the high will be 64 degrees.

If it ain’t going to snow we might as well torch. I’m done freezing my ass off walking to class.

Will use this in some of my argumentative essays for my modern political theory class. Thank you

Btw for those trying to understand PSU's argument about higher heights in the 500mb layer as a result of climate change here are some slides from my fall course about how geopotential height works. Basically, higher heights are caused by a thicker slice of atmosphere below the 500mb layer. Warmer air is a thicker slice of air due to the Ideal Gas Law.

Mhm probably the best advice, but supposing you had to what would you say.

For those wondering yes this is how we know we're in true midseason form. BTW @psuhoffman what's your advice for debating people.

My favorite weather hiking is arguably the Shenandoah's in a good upslope event. Frankly its otherworldly to ascend into the cloud deck and go from showers to a downpour on the mountainside. While I love my snow hikes rain hikes are even more dynamic. Hoping I get some opportunities for that this spring with temperatures around 60.

Please God let the HRRR be right it has me nearly reach 70 degrees tomorrow.

Ehhhh its progression makes sense sadly. Not saying its right but with this pattern we are relying solely on timing so a situation where the 50/50 is too progressive and we end up without any cold at all is possible. Though I guess it's a less damning storm in terms of PSU's climate change book if that happens.

I think that makes sense. We have a loaded up storm that will bring precip so its just a matter of if there is enough cold to take advantage (assuming the track isn't terrible).

I agree with this. The past 10 years or so have been historically bad and not the sole fault of climate change. Frankly, if it was just climate change alone causing such a dramatic shift then I wouldn’t be in college right now because clearly our planet is mega fucked so id live up the life I had left. Thankfully, it’s not our baseline and instead just bad patterns and climate change together. We will get good winters again but they’re just harder to come by. As a last note I think this storm is a great read like you said but only if we get a “perfect track”. I mean if we get a primary in the Ohio valley or west it’s raining even if it was 1700.

Welcome to the hobby! You should’ve been here for the legendary PSU runs of 2024 and 2023 and those perfect track storms. Just diabolical low in the perfect position and 35 degrees plus heavy rain. Something I’ve found to help is I go on hikes into the mountains during those perfect track storms cause they’re still cold enough (for now lmao) to get accumulation. Though it’s sad because I’m only another 1000 ft up or so (which moist adiabatic lapse rate is 4ish degrees) and that would be our base climo a hundred years ago

Yeah dude I’m not here to say it won’t get cold or snows gonna disappear forever. Climate change takes time. Im here to say on balance we lose stuff on the margins. Additionally, that gfs run won’t be true (and god knows it won’t be right till the day after the event) but they still show a “real” possibility bound by our physical laws. That storm happens in some possible world; though hopefully not our own.

I agree that the setup is flawed. So does PSU. That’s not really our point though. The point is that we need to still snow on flawed setups like this one, if not, then we’re stuck waiting for years to get a good winter. As a note to that yes it’s 12 degrees now but our super cold pattern has been super dry! That’s normal, and that’s okay but shows why we need to be cold enough in our non super cold patterns.

Learning about this stuff in my atmosphere and weather course this fall really shows how just objective it all is. I remember I had to learn and derive the whole solar forcing equation and calculate the temperate of earth based on the suns output. In the observed temp equation there are three variables. 1. Solar forcing 2. Albedo 3. Greenhouse gas absorption. That’s it. You can do the math and it all checks out. Then everything else falls from there. Storms ride baroclinic boundaries and the polar jet. Both of those shift north in response to our temperature. To emphasize it will snow again we will get a HECS again but gradually our chances slowly run dry until we’re all fighting for scraps over a 50 mile frozen shield on any storm that doesn’t have a great pattern.

While we’re dancing around the elephant in the room I’m going to address it. Look at the fucking 0z GFS Technically it’s a win! It snows for the NOVA and north crew. But seriously what the hell are we doing with our lives if we have a pure coastal low and the area of frozen in the dead of winter after 2 weeks of extreme cold is that small. I mean there’s almost no frozen on the north side! That’s not normal! It’s not a shit the blinds pattern. This is direct evidence that our planet has changed and I’m tired of dancing around that fact. If we lose storms like these then our lives are waiting for the one in 10 years shots like this January and praying chance lines up.

Ah, got it. Basically part of our ridge bridge problem isn’t necessarily the actual height lines but instead that the thickness lines of the of 500mb chart keep going up… which is related to the hyposometric equation… which states warmer air takes up more thickness in the atmosphere… which means the atmosphere is warming up and the result are new “ridges” on the charts. Funny how it all comes back to that one thing.

Quick question but what is causing that central US ridge bridge to the NAO? We even seem to have a decent Atlantic and if the PNA isn’t killing us yet then what would it be?