Layman

Wind is howling, lights are flickering, 1.33” of rain from late yesterday through 7:30am this morning.

How likely is this to push far enough east again so the wind along the immediate coast (NH and ME) is much less than modeled? That last storm was predicting gusts over 50mph IMBY and we literally had none as it rained. Picked up to modest 20mph-ish gusts after the storm moved out but that's any regular day around here.

You can lead the gift horse on a full court press but you can't make him drink the kool-aid.

CJ - is there an official term associated with this? I think over the years I've seen "coastal jack" and "cream jeans" however in todays usage, I'm assuming the former...?

It's times like these I miss the old George and James before him (RIP). While almost always unrealistic, their optimism and exuberance for an unparalleled positive winter outcome was the deep counter balance to the frequent Eeyore posts, even if those are ultimately accurate. Whether it's going "all in!" on a D15 Kuchera snow depth map or declaring a pending "blizzard" with conviction few men can muster, it showed that someone, somewhere (for some odd reason, specifically on or near the Cape...?) had faith that things were going to work out from a winter perspective. Most sensible readers could sift through the posts and take them for what they were, but I for one appreciated the Lloyd Christmas-esque "So you're saying there's a chance?!" they brought to the table.

Has this improved at all over the past week or is everything still in flux? I recall the conversation at the time was that these were all over the place (as you showed here) and the long range was a crap shoot. We're now 3 days out from whatever was being shown at D10 at that time - did the models provide a fair assessment 7 days ago as to what would be happening? From comments over the past couple days it sounds like much is still in a dynamic pattern with no real direction. Curious to see if/when they begin to hone in on possibilities with a higher level of confidence.

My Amazon order for this book got cancelled. No reason given. Not sure what this means for winter...

Seems like the music put him into a trance and he couldn't help it... I was hoping they'd have the actual audio there to see what it sounded like.

That's starting to sound like hyperboreality to me.

Hopefully this doesn't deter you folks from offering up analysis based on what you're seeing in each model gyration. There are plenty of people in here (maybe?) who appreciate the professional perspectives, regardless of the weather outcome.

Looks like we'll be finishing at 2.27" total rainfall here. Breeze picking up a little now.

That's interesting. Is there an amount threshold to determine what's considered "snow" for this? For that matter, is there a generally understood number in the industry that's recognized as a minimum amount of actual snow? I'm not sure if you're comment above implies that to people more in the know than I am with these things. I just know if it's spitting snow here and not coating grass, that's not appreciable snow. (No kidding! )

That's a tough spot to be in and from an end user perspective, I'd much rather be forewarned of a possible event well ahead of time to prepare than have a last minute warning run up the pole. If it doesn't pan out, I certainly find it's helpful to have an explanation why but a lot of people don't care and will likely say "They never get it right!" Trying to predict an ever evolving atmosphere is no easy task and reasonable people understand that. The big takeaway for me whenever this happens is how significantly modeling/forecasting can change in a few short hours. I went to bed last night thinking I'd be woken up with big wind gusts and a likely power outage. Woke up this morning to essentially no wind at all, and still no wind which is fine by me. Determining what drives confidence to lock in a prediction at X hours out from an event is very interesting to me and something I hope to get a better grasp on over time. 12/10 0.71" of rain, max gust of 13.6mph at 11:19pm 12/11 1.44" of rain as of 8:15am, max gust of 11.4mph at 2:34am

0.35" and 56.8 at ~6:30pm. Weather apps are guessing 3.5" total through tomorrow and still saying gusts over 50mph tonight. Basically no wind to speak of at the moment.

Just under a 300 degree spread! Must be a record

Collectively, do these look like a reasonably accurate depiction of what to expect Sunday night into Monday? The 950mb winds look to have a super tight gradient right over my head. Would a shift west strengthen the winds here or is that determined by the coast regardless? The NAM 10-meter looks really mundane at my location if I'm interpreting it correctly.

Looks like a really nice area. Ironically, I need to secure a "home base" for about 6-10 months in NC during 2024 about an hour outside of Greensboro for my company next year. Any direction and within an hour or so from that area. I was thinking Lake Norman however, do you have any recommendations for places to avoid or areas that are nice? I'm going in blind and am trying to find a nice area to pop into for a few days at a time each month to check on things while we get operations going.

Nice pics! Where in NC is that? EDIT: Pardon my reading comprehension....I just saw you said Beech and looked it up.

“Accu”weather is calling for max gusts to 51mph where I am. My station has recorded a mid to high 30’s mph gust during big wind events. Not sure if it’s not precise enough to record a true higher gust or if we simply don’t get them higher than that here. We’re facing south and have a 20-30 acre field in front of us so the wind can blow. I’m hoping for lower gusts but will get the generator staged just in case.

Is it this book? It's dirt cheap and sounds interesting. I'm going to grab it if it is. EDIT: I bought it regardless https://amzn.to/3RbQKIO

Could you expound on this further? Or have you in any of your write ups that you could direct me to? I'm not familiar with this and am curious about the mechanics and analogs of prior instances of this happening.

12.2 for the low this morning. Frosty. Coldest of the season so far.

Cool shot from the North Ridge cam at Killington this morning

Interesting points - I appreciate your perspective and approach with these discussions. As an end user of forecast information, I definitely fall into the category you mentioned regarding current expectations. I utilize a forecast to plan things in my life and expect it to be accurate out to a certain point. In this forum however, as I see discussions regarding patterns, changes that are weeks away, etc my perception changes to more of what has a higher chance of being a likely in the future - there's no expectation that something is concretely going to happen outside of say 3-5 days lead time. Again, this falls right into that realm you mentioned. As an outsider looking in, I see the weather models as an attempt to eventually replace the forecaster. This is clearly not happening anytime soon, but this discussion highlights the need for an experienced forecaster to interpret model data and give an opinion on what they believe is most likely to happen. The models now simply being a tool that, when in the hands of an expert, can use that tool with as much precision as it is capable of. A rhetorical question I have is: How many data inputs are required to have 100% accurate forecast at any given (reasonable?) point in time? The easiest answer is "All of them". With that being a veritable impossibility, I imagine there is a minimum threshold of atmospheric data points that would provide a highly reliable forecast over varying degrees of time. It's likely multitudes of what's being processed today, but I'm so far removed from it that I honestly have no idea. Maybe it's much closer than I suspect. The fact that experienced forecasters can look at a model run and say "Oftentimes when it does this, it's actually showing THIS will happen", makes me think that there are programming updates that could be made to hone those areas. However, I suppose it's possible that the interpretation of the model output by a forecaster is so many derivatives away from the data inputs that went into creating it that it's far from a one to one relationship with respect to making programming updates. With so many ever-evolving forces impacting the atmosphere and weather at any moment in time, it seems this realm should be devoid of declarative statements until you can "see the whites of it's eyes". I sense the most seasoned forecasters here take that approach but it sometimes gets lost in the noise. Welcome to the internet, Sir!