TimB

Here is the GFS from as recently as 6z Saturday for today’s Mid-Atlantic storm: There’s still time, there’s still hope.

Every 5 min obs at DCA since 9:14 has been heavy snow. Looks like about 3/4” of liquid equivalent since changeover there.

That has been my inclination, but wanted to confirm that it isn’t just my own already well-documented pessimism.

How concerned should we be that the GFS hasn’t picked up on anything with the Thurs/Fri storm less than 4 days from onset?

Yes, gone way too soon. And yes, I know who Karen Carpenter is despite having zero overlap of our time on this earth.

Little did she know… too dark?

It’s all fun and games until DCA’s season-to-date total is double digits ahead of some of us with better climo. LOL

Need a good second storm if the first one looks anything like that for DCA. I don’t know if I can handle being behind DCA’s season total snowfall for any appreciable amount of time.

One other interesting note: the last time the temp dropped below 14 at MDT was 2/2/2019, which is by far the longest such streak ever at that location. Could that be in jeopardy by the weekend?

The entrance of the full blown trough definitely needs to be slower (like the EC) for the storm timing to work out.

I don’t take the Ukie that seriously except when it’s showing the best news of the current model suite so far.

12z Ukie for 1/7:

It looks like it could get interesting (not for me, but definitely for southern areas of C PA) and probably has an effect on how the rest of the week plays out. Can’t imagine models will come into agreement on the later system until the earlier system does what it does.

Yeah, I wasn’t buying the scenario the 0z GFS spit out.

I’ll admit that I was a bit tipsy when I looked at the models last night, but didn’t the 0z GFS and CMC suppress the 1/7 system? I remember being glad I stayed up for the Euro and I’m glad to see it’s back on the GFS.

Shades of January 2019. Okay, not that cold. That was the true extreme event when it comes to anything recent up there.

Verbatim wouldn’t be great but there’s a lot of model noise going on here. I’m just saying with the overall pattern change coming the models are struggling to get a handle on any of the details, which is probably typical with a major pattern change.

Hmm. Shows a drastically different pattern in the D7-10 range. Models still seem to be all over the map with the general longwave pattern at that range.

18z GFS delivers the goods.

PIT looks to finish December with an average temperature somewhere around 40.9 (+7.2 departure, 9th warmest all time, 2nd warmest in the KPIT era only behind 2015) and 0.3” of snow (-7.4 departure, 7th least all time, 3rd least in the KPIT era behind only 1994 and 2014 and tied with 2015). January can’t be worse than that, right? No model consistency on the January 6th-7th potential, though it seems likely there will be precip during that timeframe and in some cases a chance for something worth tracking. Time will tell.

We’re all on the same team here. I’ll do my best to stop being a fair-weather weather enthusiast. January looks better than December and that’s all we can ask for.

Major improvement for Thurs on 0z.

I apologize, it’s difficult not to get frustrated with a pattern where the opportunities to exit before it’s too late are diminishing. Beyond that, 2021 has been an extremely difficult year for me personally (not just pandemic stuff), and some of that is almost certainly reflected in my negativity about this winter, which feels like icing on the cake to a terrible year. I’ll try to tone it down.

Fair enough, I was way too hasty in my look at it. General pattern is ugly when it comes to sustained cold.