Bob Chill

Long awaited transition to a blocked/cold longwave pattern is looking more like a lock every ens run. Should come as a big relief to everyone who's been concerned it never develops. Very attractive h5 pattern cracking into the sub d10 range. Next week's hints at a followup wave potential is the best chance we have at another decent (all snow) event. However, you only have to go back to the storm hitting this weekend where models showed the same thing in the mid/long range. It's a razor thin margin to have one of those followups work. Best to just let the entire system get closer in time before picking apart the potential. And also know that these types of events are low probability and extremely difficult to model a week out in time. Beyond that looks great in the sense that any precip will likely be snow but as others have said dry could be a problem. Gefs/eps show enough promise after the stable cold gets here to be optimistic but we're a long ways from knowing how any discrete shortwave will track and produce something. Still good odds we don't get shut out through the end of Jan. I'm not making any guesses as to how or what drops snow on our region. All in all, after next week's probable west track it looks like we'll have the best winter pattern of the season to work with.

We might have a better chance for onset snow than backend Absolutely. Accum from a flip at the end is always low probability. One thing models have consistently done this year in the short range (48 hours and in) is shift the rain/snow line north. Right now we have zero wiggle room and that's not good. SNE may have to deal with that trend as well.

18z icon lol...I need to not go over 32 You might stay just below freezing but the rain looks to be heavy at times. 30-31 and heavy rain won't accrete well. I'm hoping we somehow pull off a flip to snow at the end. That would make it fun. Especially if temps plummet like advertised. Doesn't look likely but that could change

As the low approaches winds will be out east for a while then out of the south and not light either. The cold is shallow and the freezing line isn't as far south as we would like to see. If an inversion keeps winds from mixing down then surface temps could be stubborn. Snow cover will help some too but this isn't that good CAD setup. It's more like an insitu CAD versus times when we have a true cold drain with northerly winds as precip starts.

I generally agree. The one thing going for us is the track of the shortwave is decent. Upper level support will prob fire up some moderate snow showers. Radar will look similar to spring rain showers and whoever get under the heaviest could easily get 2". Maybe even 3" if the stars align. My bar is 1" and I'll slantstick if necessary

What's the minimum solution to keep you in?

Fantasyland Fv3 strongly agrees with the insane closed ridge idea on the gefs.

@psuhoffman 18z gefs looks great and BN heights in the 50/50 area as well. No pushback of blocking and an unusually strong -epo signal with a closed ridge way out in time. That's not very common at 16 day leads. All we can do is hope all these blocked looks actually happen in some fashion. I noticed the EPS d10+ was pretty dry also. Goes along with what i was thinking yesterday that during the transition when the tpv drops down that moisture laden storms would be hard to come by. Which would be only a temporary problem anyways. Not including tomorrow night, it looks like 2-3 precip chances over the next 10 days. Would be great if one or more is at least partially frozen but even if it doesn't work things still look as promising as you can ask at this lead for Feb.

I think i know what the problem is. You rip and read my posts after i rip and read model output when the right thing to do is hang out and get ripped while trolling Ji.

It's just the L stamp making it confusing. The area of low pressure is stretched/elongated along the the boundary. If you look at the isobars and ignore the L stamp it's less confusing.

I think you might have comprehension problems with my posts. The main point i made yesterday was difficult times ahead for a clean/large snowstorm. I'd like to see a good counter thesis saying otherwise

Oh come on man... lol. I said an hour of mod snow. Said nothing about total hours or how much light snow we'll get.

Both nams depict a line of decent snow showers so most of what falls happens in a very short window. I'd be totally good with an hour of mod snow.

Thought the same. Looks good. Also looks like no shutout pattern for the next 2 weeks so any precip event has a chance at delivering something.

It's never looked good for us to it's easy to stomach one way or the other. I won't be staying up for the euro this week. Best case scenario (unless magic happens) would be 2-4" mixed in with a lot of rain. Maybe some sleet or freezing rain but even zr will be challenging for most or all of our area. 30-32 degrees and heavy rain is not a recipe for a substantial zr event.