In the Summer I was seeing that really cold 500mb 60-90N and negative SLP (large -8 anomaly over the whole arctic circle June to August) -- I was seeing that these things strongly preceded -AO Winter's. It was a really strong signal, like the plus and minus side has hit every time since 2012. So I was bullish on this Winter for thinking it would be mostly -AO. You know -AO is our best snow pattern. It is turning out to be more of a -AO Winter, but the STJ has been dry up to this point. It does look like after Jan 21/22, it will get wetter. I'm not ready to say this Winter one side of a fail coin, because I think there is high potential Jan 23 - Feb 10. We might even do average snowfall by then. 384hr long range ensembles are showing an east+PNA, which you know correlates with our greatest snowfalls. Let's see how that 3 week period mid-Winter does, even if models aren't showing much right now.
Besides that, the lowest Baltimore's average high goes to is 38F on Jan 27, and DC has an average high at the lowest point of 40F. average x average is still not good enough. So we can fail on both sides, if more extremes aren't being met. Our last -PDO was with -NAO, this one is very +NAO. Kind of a big difference for coastal SLP. I would like to see a west-based El Nino like 02-03 or a El Nino/-QBO like 09-10.. now 23-24 was El Nino/-QBO but it was very -PDO and an east based event. east-based El Nino's and -PDO are actually the warmest Winters for the CONUS since 1950.