George001

The gfs shows how we score in these patterns. You aren’t getting big storms in this pattern, its multiple minor storms. But if you are on the right side of the gradient they can add up quick.

Yeah, looks like more fast flow garbage to me. I’m sick of the fast zonal flow, hard to get huge storms in that pattern. I wouldn’t say no to smaller storms, but it’s hard to get excited about a pattern that doesn’t have that monster blizzard upside.

We will have our chances but I have a few concerns with this pattern. 1. The orientation of the western ridge is SW to NE, not north-south. 2. The western ridge axis is too far west 3. The troughing over the central US is broad, and there are very high heights over the SE. This doesn’t look like an amplified pattern.

im glad to see the realistic posts about where we are at this winter and how things look, rather than the whole “oh just wait until Feb 10th” or even the whole “Wait until late Feb-early Mar, SSW will save us” bullshit. When you are kicking the can 10+ days during what is supposed to be PEAK SNOW CLIMO, thats a ratter.

Yeah this La Niña developed very differently than recent ones. Still feel the ENSO state for next winter is up in the air, I’m not really sold on an El Niño yet. Multi year cold ENSO periods immediately followed 6/9 of the last strong or super ninos, with 3 of those being the 15-16, 09-10 and 97-98 El Niños.

Also, good winters like 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 by this point in winter already had at least one major storm

It’s never a good sign when you are looking to the long range during peak snow climo. Some of the other boards im on I am seeing a lot of 300+ hour maps being posted, in my opinion that means winter is cooked. In a normal winter we would be consistently tracking 1-2 threats inside 7 days late Jan-the first half of Feb.

Ouch, that’s a big whiff.

Yeah can’t really argue with that, the NWS and none of the TV mets bought it. My weather app was saying 5-6 inches of snow for me starting from 3 days out and stayed in that range. Well, the gfs is doing it again giving my area 2 feet of snow a week out and this time I’m not buying it.

I’ll believe it when I see the snow falling. This keeps happening, the models show big snows a week out and then the rug pull happens in the short range. Can’t even trust it even 1 day out, the gfs and euro had me getting a fairly significant storm last time and I only got a minor snowfall.

Agree that it’s a good ice storm setup. The 12z eps for Feb 2nd during the first part of the storm has surface temps in the 20s and the 850s are +4-5C AN

Another thing I noticed looking at the snow records is that snowfall outside of winter used to be more common. In the late 1800s, there was a 10 year stretch where Boston recorded an inch or more of snow in November 5 years. Boston apparently recorded 17.8 inches of snow in November of 1898, and the previous November had 8.1 inches. That is mind blowing to me, a rarity back then, likely impossible now.

I thought I understood what Tip was talking about in terms of the human psychology and many forms of climate change denial, from full blown brain damage levels of denial to simply underestimating its reach, but I didn’t. I think it finally clicked for me, the whole false narrative about how cold this winter has been…. one that I fell into myself, relying on my senses rather than the actual facts, that IS a form of soft denial. When it’s super obvious like hitting 80 degrees in Feb, that’s a different story. But cold snaps being a little less cold over time, warm stretches being a little longer….. all these little things. Our senses don’t detect them. I don’t know if it’s our subconscious not wanting to face the reality of HOW fucked we are or something else, but it’s clear that there is some kind of bias rooted in human nature that leads to society as a whole underestimating climate change. I’m disappointed in myself for allowing myself to succumb to climate change denial of ANY form. I should know better, we all should. The narrative about how frigid this winter has been, it’s all a lie. The comparisons to 13-14, that’s bullshit too.

This is a good reminder that as “cold” as this winter has been, it really has only been slightly BN. AGW has skewed our perspective, a slightly below normal winter feels like we entered the ice box because it’s been so fucking warm the past decade. I’m guilty of this myself, having referred to December as a cold month and January as “frigid”. Our senses may lie, but the data doesn’t. Our climate is changing right under our noses and we just sort of adjust to it, it becomes the new normal. Really, it puts things in perspective the extent climate change has progressed.

It really has been awful. Northern energy doesn’t dig as much as it used to.

This is what bothers me more than anything. You can make up a snow deficit very quickly with the right pattern in late January into mid Feb. But in good winters we are consistently tracking 1-2 threats inside 7 days during the late Jan-mid Feb period. If we are looking to the long range for hope in late Jan, no way around it that is bad news. 1 clipper threat and nothing else over the next 10 days doesn’t really move the needle.

This is killing us in New England too. Unlike areas farther south, we need more than just one big storm to get to average snowfall. Actually, the lack of clippers has been a problem for a while and has been getting worse and worse over the years.

I get it, I did the same last winter. If you are already checking out I take it you aren’t buying the optimism for this upcoming pattern. I still track even when things look objectively bad because I’m a huge weenie, but if things don’t get better I’ll likely end my winter tracking a month early (usually track until early April). It does get old chasing ghost after ghost with nothing to show for it, even for me. Personally I am of the opinion we had our HECS window 1/11-1/12, and whiffed.

I was optimistic at first, I got really sucked in by the cold and stuck to my guns on that for a while. I initially thought it was just bad luck, we would eventually get hit but then I realized I misread the pattern. The 7 day ensemble mean tells the story, very dry look with BN precip until you roll it forward to 2 weeks. All the “epic” looks leading to whiff after whiff, and now we are in peak snow climo and tracking what is likely another day 10 ghost. In average or good winters you don’t have these extended lull periods during peak climo. You would expect to have 1-2 threats inside 7 days for a 3 or so week period during the heart of winter. We don’t have that

The lower end of the snowfall prediction for Boston looks pretty good right now. Based on how the first half of winter has gone and looking at guidance the next couple of weeks, I’m thinking my 30-40 inch prediction for Boston will bust high. Somewhere in the mid 20s as a final total seems like a fairly reasonable estimate at this point.

My concern is that the dry pattern remains on guidance even as we go from deep cold to more seasonal temps. My hope was that we would see the SE ridge flex, shift the storm track north and get hit fairly hard late Jan into Feb. but guidance doesn’t show that happening. It more goes from cold and dry to seasonal and dry.

Look at the 7 day precip mean on the ensembles…. Fairly dry look for the next 15 days or so. Unfortunately this dry pattern appears to be somewhat locked in. It looks warmer than Jan temp wise, but not a real torch. More of the back and forth we saw in December. Still, not what you want to see during peak snowfall climo. I would say it’s an unfavorable overall look for snow relative to climo. I’m not done tracking storms, but at this point I am throwing in the towel on trying to look for a path to an AN snow winter. We are at the point where 70-80% of average snow is a realistic high end outcome.

Looks like we are looking at a gradient pattern setting up for early Feb

It isn’t a good thing for us when the Deep South is getting buried, very suppressive pattern.

I don’t know about that. The MJO plots have it briefly going into phase 4 (relaxation period early Feb?) and then potentially into the cold phases again. My biggest concern is that we will see more of the same, cold and dry. That has been the pattern the first half of winter, often these patterns have a tendency to lock in. Honestly think there is a decent chance we finish the winter with both below normal temps and below normal snowfall, which is very rare especially with the acceleration of climate change. We have seen a tendency towards warm/wet as AGW progresses. It is unfortunate that this cold pattern has not been a snowy one, as cold winters like this are becoming rarer and rarer as our climate warms. It would be nice to capitalize on it and snow when we do get cold weather.