jwilson

When I get older, I'm retiring to Mammoth Lakes or Lake Tahoe. 200" of snow per year. Ideally I'll have a place I can ski/snowboard right out to the slopes.

For 2009, even I got screwed a tad on that one being in the Philly suburbs. Philly measured 23" and I got 12" - that entire winter was full of tight gradient snow storms.

I think my 3.2" is a final. We've been getting showery snows for a while now but nothing is adding up. I measured 1.7" at 5:30 AM and 2.8" at 7:30 AM. Center cut Allegheny got stuck under subsidence/divergence earlier and that limited our totals. Likewise, a lot of our snow was very fine flakes. I think one of the things the models didn't handle well was snow growth. Perhaps that was due to wind shear in the upper levels? I'm not well versed in the DGZ. This one hit the target; not an overperformer nor did it disappoint, necessarily. If we had some blocking it could have been amazing. To get anything in this winter is luck, though. A shame we don't see these inland low tracks more often. Still waiting for that widespread overrunning event that gets everyone.

Changeover occurred between 330 and 4 AM. Have what looks to be an inch or so thus far, boundary might be setting up east, but the snow side of this system looks more robust (for now) than expected. We'll see when bombogensis occurs how frontogenic forcing interplays with the current shield.

SREF plumes are up to a mean of over 4" now, compared to 2.5" earlier. Meanwhile, the HRDPS is a pretty good hit for us (6-10"), though the model name always makes me think it's derpy. Not sure it's all that valuable, just another possible solution.

The dynamics involved mean this storm has high bust potential either direction. The heaviest band has swung from the west back to the east of us today.

GEFS mean at 12Z was 5" for PIT. That's robust. Hard to trust it, though. We should have some white rain, but I don't know for how long. SREF mean is 2.5". High-res NAM has changeover around 2-3 AM. GFS is slower, closer to 6-7 AM. Canadian agrees. Bunch of mesoscale models are 4-5 AM, including SREFS, HRRR, ARW. RGEM has the bulk of snow over by 8 AM. In other words, there's a spread, but I would be more inclined to trust the faster solutions. Chances favor the snow rates are at or past peak at 7 AM. Messy commute.

Based on the 12Z suite, I'd say the odds *look* decent for at least a 2" event in the metro area, which would probably be the biggest storm for most - if not all - of us. I'm only at ~6" on the season versus the NWS measurement. For right now, the NWS has PIT at a 74% chance of 2" or more. 44% chance at 4" or more. 1% chance at >12" (lol). Given the intense convection and fast storm movement we'll see, there's also a high bust potential for those areas that fall outside of the best convective bands (or get stuck under divergence). It will likely come down to a nowcast event. Reminds me of tracking Miller B's off the coast. A lot of times you'd have wildly different snow totals just a few miles apart because of the convergence/divergence and banding.

Was just about to say the NAM finds a new way to screw us by pulling the low too far west. It trains the good snow to our west and northwest while dryslotting AGH (and points SE) for a while. Its totals are overdone, but that general idea is trouble.

It is looking to me like an interior New England special. GFS & NAM are pretty bearish on this, only a couple inches, at most. NAM looks oddly dry, actually, until the low gets cranking in the Atlantic. The Canadian is a bit more bullish, ranging from 3-6" across Allegheny (West to East, respectively). The Canadian has been better this winter than the GFS so there's a little bit of optimism for you. We're relying on storm dynamics to bring us snow, requiring decent rates in a fast-moving LP to overcome antecedent warmth. Not that it can't work, but we might have a period of white rain which limits accumulations.

If Wichita Falls, TX is getting a bigger snow than we've seen in years, you know there's something funky going on in weather town.

It's part of a decadal trend, but there's an overall larger trend for the NAO to be positive during the winter months starting back in the 1980s. The NAO between 1950 and 1980 averaged overwhelmingly negative versus the average since then which has been quite the opposite. If we break that down a little further, we can see that during the 80s, the NAO spiked upward. It did begin a downward trend in the 90s which stopped right around 2010 (give or take a couple years), but it still remained positive, overall. Since then, the NAO has spiked hard positive again. I think there's an argument the trend should stop soon and start declining again. Similar to how it operated in the 90s. That wouldn't necessarily be good news for snow lovers. Now there's some debate, I suppose, about why this has occurred. I don't know if data collection and analysis is better now (perhaps the older measurements were flawed or imprecise relative to modern times). Is it climate change? Is it short-term variability? I don't know that anyone is certain on the answer. I'm not an expert, either. Here is one relevant portion from a research paper on the NAO and its influence on warming: Basically, the -NAO during summer months has had a negative effect on the warmth of that season over this period. It has only continued since the time frame included in this particular study. Not to say a +NAO can't happen during the summer, because it can, but that hasn't been the norm or average in recent history. Here we can more clearly see the trend of the NAO downward over the summer months (JJA) since the 90s. There's a bit more from that paper: Prior to this decade, of course, the NAO attempted to exert a cooling influence on our winters, but the overall anomalies rose, anyway, in spite of it. This is due to overall climate change and warming trends outside the influence of the NAO. Since then, however, the NAO hasn't exerted the same cooling influence on our winters and we've mostly been going the other way. It helps explain a little why this winter has been basically nonexistant; however, there's a lot of variables to consider. Ultimately, the NAO doesn't exert the same influence on summer temps for us as it does for winter temps, so I don't think it's a big reason for our milder summers, but it could still have some impact, especially if the values are strongly anomalous in one direction or the other.

The Giants will win the world series, undoubtedly.

Euro and ensembles hint at potential Saturday night along with GFS/Icon. Canadian doesn't have the shortwave, more of a little northern stream clipper of sorts. There's a bit of room to come north, which is a good thing, but perhaps the overall pattern hints at another failure in the works. Retreating high. Threat has moved around and we're still 4/5 days out. Hard to get too excited, cap is probably 3" which is relatively small (but would be our biggest hit this winter if materialized).

The -NAO through summer is almost a guarantee, at this point. We've been stuck in this loop where the NAO tanks from April to October and is positive for the winter months. I imagine that's part of the reason we haven't had a really hot summer in a while. Then we get the heat into fall (September/October) when the pattern starts flipping.

Euro and GFS actually look similar for once (Thursday into Friday). The Canadian is also somewhat similar, but it's a bit more strung out initially and then cranks the primary low later (Saturday). It's all a very odd evolution. It amounts to three straight days of rain (Tuesday through Thursday) and then snow on Friday, but obviously the location and strength of the primary/ULL would factor into how much snow we get, if any. The GFS does go negative tilt. We're under 7 days which makes this "agreement" unusual for the winter, but given all the moving pieces, I'm not ready to buy in to any solution. I have to think a more progressive storm is likely which would limit our accumulations to nothing, more or less. I don't even know if it's worth mentioning because we're due to have the rug pulled out in another cycle or two, but there's nothing else to talk about.

Yeah, remember that? Well, it's down to 10% now. EL OH EL

My hopefully positive takeaway from this winter: improvements to modeling science. We've seen time-and-time again models simply default to snow - and big snow - in the long-range. Anytime we get within 4 to 7 days, however, all that snow vanishes into a calm wind. The GFS is especially infamous for this, but it isn't alone. Clearly there are limitations that seem to favor deep storm systems and lots of snow in the long range. Ideally, folks can use this winter as another learning tool to correct these biases and flaws, and one day the models will stop teasing us with Siberian looks when all we get is ... Richmond, VA.

That's through February 12th. Honestly, 3" in the prime of winter over a two week period is almost guaranteed around here. That's not hard to come by, and that's why I'd say it's not a hugely relevant statistic. We have some cold air now with potential access to more in the near future, as well a bit more favorable ridge and trough axis, but we might need to hit the window just right or storms will slide to our south (then in between continue to cut west as has been the typical track all year).

Unsurprisingly, the GEFS have backed off significantly from the earlier solutions, while the Euro ensembles are basically a nothing-burger. There's still time for a more phased solution to return, but it was always a long shot. Long-term snowfall probabilities have us at essentially a 100% chance of more than three inches over the next couple weeks, but that doesn't mean a whole lot, really, considering the length of the term.

The ensembles have been somewhat better than the OP GFS. *All* the members have something, which is fairly interesting. 12 out of 20 give us at least 6", while a few more are borderline to that level depending on your target point. I think it is rare (or at least unusual) to see this at such a range. The question is whether you believe it. Personally, we've been yanked several times already in this winter from ~7 days out. The GFS has been terrible. I'm not quite ready to buy in, but I'm also not sure if the GEFS has honked this season. It will be rather telling if the Euro ensembles at 0Z have anything similar.

I'm wondering how much the specific NWS location is influenced by factors of elevation and just pure geography (being more north and west of the city). I feel like what they measure and experience isn't always what the entirety of the metro area experiences. Now I probably don't have much room to question them as I've only lived in the metro area for just over a year now, but last winter I measured 24.3" on the season while the NWS official Pittsburgh total is 36.6" of snow. I definitely did not have a 5"+ or greater event last winter; the most being that 4" or so on February 20th. I didn't measure a 5" event in the preceding two winters, either, but that data isn't relevant because I was in a different locale. The last storm over 5" I measured was the big one in 2016. And ironically enough, I believe that largely spared Pittsburgh.

I guess this isn't an unpopular opinion, but I'd almost certainly prefer to see snow levels increase in November and December and then relax in February and March. It seems the opposite of that is what's actually happening, however. Are seasons shifting in terms of their place on our traditional calendar, or disappearing altogether? I'm sure this also depends on where you live. The midwest still does quite well with early season snow storms.

Don't fret, folks! March will be rockin' and we'll have a great pattern for snow next fall ... only for it to fall apart before winter actually begins so we can do this all over again.