78Blizzard

Our corporate media are headlining things like "Polar vortex to unleash menacing arctic blast". We used to call it winter, but, that was before climate change turned normal, seasonal and longer-period variations in temperature into a man-made environmental disaster.

Last year was even warmer. Here are the last five years of ocean temps for Boston on December 18. 2022 48.2F 2021 50.4F 2020 46.9F 2019 45.7F 2018 45.1F

We may get to 200 pages yet thanks to all the comedians we have here.

I know what you mean. Cutters can be shown at d8 and rarely not verify. But how many times have we seen a big hit even 3-4 days out turn into a whiff or meh?

It got into its sweet spot at day 6 today. That's the second consecutive system it caved on day 6. Based on this track record trend, I would give short shrift to anything the GFS is pushing beyond 6 days. At least until it proves otherwise.

You mean this prediction isn't coming true?

CMC holding to its cutter.

It's not.

Major ice storm for NNE.

Nice thump from the first system.

Digging much less this time, too.

The trough out west seems more positive tilted than at 18z.

They can't go any further west.

Actually, not that good for them either with lots of taint.

Yeah, just north of Minnesota. But not as strong, around 1050 mb.

We need it dropping into Minnesota or the upper lakes.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I see someone claiming a great pattern is shaping up for the period..........

As the peeps anxiously await the 18z GFS to keep their hopes alive for a grinch-free Christmas.

I'm convinced that Hunga Tonga has something to do with this.

I know the feeling. I started mine up on Tuesday to make sure it was ready for the season, and in the back of my mind was wondering if I jinxed it.

It seems to almost always fail when we start a thread at 8 days out. I remember when James did it and people lambasted him for that.

In the case of today's system, the GFS was the outlier ots and finally caved to the others on d6. So if it follows the same pattern, we should expect it to cave soon.

Thanks for the input. I agree with you. So basically all these vendor snow maps are all somewhat useless not knowing their coding.

Wrong. You're misinterpreting what I said. Using your example in what I said, the GEFS mean would have shown an slp that would have indicated by its lower and upper level metrics clearly a rain situation, and the mean snow would be zero. As I said, it should all be based on what emanates from the placement of the mean slp.

I don't get that. If the temps and qpf are means of all members, then so is the snow a mean of all members. If the mean temps for an area are low to mid 20's, and upper level means are well below freezing for the same area, shouldn't the mean snow for that area correspond with those indicators? Otherwise, it would appear that the cutting members are skewing the snow totals. The placement of the low on the GEFS is also a mean, and the resulting metrics should be based on that. I think the problem with most of the ensemble models is that they take a mean of the snow totals of all members (including the cutters showing little or zero) and plug that into their maps, when in reality the maps should be reflecting the snow resulting from the placing of the mean slp and resultant lower and upper level means. The storm vista maps appear to take the latter approach with the GEFS.