TimB

Yeah, that’s 12/30, so the second to last play of the first quarter and we’re only down two scores. Plenty of time.

When it becomes the shorter range, your desired weather will win out. We know this.

Longer range GFS looks a lot better so far, for whatever that’s worth.

The normal high at MDT today is 42, so mid 40s would be seasonable.

I could live with a pause of fans, but my morale is already in the shitter at the moment and I’m sure there are many others who would say the same, and having distractions helps immensely.

In my opinion, one of the worst parts of the early days of the pandemic was not even having sports to take one’s mind off anything happening in the world. May we never forget how much that sucked. I certainly understand why they were shut down at that time, and they rightfully should have been, but there has to be some sort of balance now.

The problem I have is, it’s hard for me to appreciate the other 3 seasons much if at all if winter isn’t what I would consider adequate. It’s hard for me to get much below normal snowfall and then suffer through months and months of heat and humidity. But still plenty of time.

I’ve been negative lately, I’ll admit. Need to find that patience.

I don’t mean a pattern where the warm parts are 10-20 degrees above normal and the cold parts are merely seasonal, without even the threat of an advisory level snowfall or even an inch or two for that matter.

It’d be a LOT easier not to fret over stuff like this if there had been anything remotely resembling winter in the days and weeks leading up to it. That’s ultimately the issue here.

I would have also imagined that the part of the run where the 500 heights were well into the blue would produce BN temps here, but…

Hopefully the ensembles continue to look better than the rubbish the 12z GFS just spit out.

The CMC would like a word with you. Oh wait, it’s on something.

CMC ensemble looks good. GEFS 500 height anomaly is red over PA for much of its run.

Was going to say MDT gets about 6” of snow on the 0z but I see that’s all on the last day of the run and it’s the front end of a snow to rain system. And by then we’re up to the 35th day of winter.

(Big time clown map, but the 18z GFS ends like this.)

As always, well said. With all due respect to the rest of us peons, it gives me peace of mind to hear it from a met.

But beyond that, it’s frustrating. First the pattern was changing the week before Christmas, then right around Christmas, then right after Christmas, but now we’re on the precipice of losing New Year’s too. That said, I love what things are showing after New Year’s, but I just can’t trust any of that. But all will be forgiven between me and the weather gods if it happens. I won’t go and quote the posts from around this time in 2019 (I wasn’t here then), but that thread is an interesting read and, without the timestamps, I’d think it was from this month. All sorts of hope for January and we all know how that turned out.

The only conclusion I’m drawing here is purely mathematical, and that is (3/130)^2 = approximately 1 in 2,000.

@Blizzard of 93, I really hope you’re right. A short winter would largely be made up for with a really good pattern. But by day 13, MDT is staring down the barrel of a second consecutive year where 0.2” or more of snowfall hasn’t fallen on 311 days in a row, which has only happened one other year in 130+ years of recorded history.

I like to play a little game where I pick a random panel of an ensemble run and see if much has changed. I picked this one today: I’m afraid to look at the 6z GFS. Maybe you already have, how much snow falls at MDT over the course of the run?

What do you describe as seasonal? +5 departures? +10? How many degrees above or below normal can you be and still be “seasonable”?

Best guess at high temp Christmas Day…go.

A very familiar position for us: rooting for the GFS.