Bob Chill

GEFS agrees with the general idea that the op was showing in fantasyland. Overall, it's a very encouraging run for the SE and even deep south from D9 through the end of the run. Nothing is moving back in time either. If anything, the block is modeled to build faster than guidance was showing just 2 days ago. You guys are prob going to be pretty busy tracking stuff from mid next week through potentially the end of Feb.

You guys getting extra sleep right now? Everything remains on track for a significant blocking event beginning to take shape in just 6 days. Will take some time to evolve beyond that but no rug pulls showing up at all. Ens look rock solid near the end of the month. Fantasy GFS just spit out a sick full continental block and mid latitude wave train (around the entire globe. lol).

It could be dryish on the front side as the TPV drops in. It's a significant pattern change and very well could squash big juiced up storm chances for a time but the tradeoff is entering a backgound state that favors snow over heavy rain. EPS has Raleigh getting around .60 QPF from the 25th through the end of Jan. That's actually a half decent mean and doesn't indicate overly dry. I've seen mean QPF be as low as .10 for d10-15 on the EPS. That's an exceptionally dry mean. Right now it looks good enough. I just want to get rid of the heavy rainer west track pattern. You have to start somewhere... lol

Starting to get a steady flow of fantasy op looks that include the ens idea of a stout neg nao building inside of 2 weeks. Getting close to a lock that it's really happening. We'll know within a week. I've run through lots of data over the years and it's much more common in my area to get snow when the AO/NAO are rising upwards in negative territory. I have a hunch you guys do better with the opposite. One of your data heads can confirm. If that's the case, the last week of Jan looks really good for the SE.

Lol- i've been chatting with him for 12 years and have enjoyed most of his epic melts and rants. He's pretty funny honestly. When it comes to weather (snow in particular) I only trust myself. Lol Euro weeklies are fantastic start to finish but this panel is right out of the SE big snow textbook imo. It's almost NSFW

FWIW- 12z EPS has sped up the flip to a -NAO by about a day... It's less than 15 days away. Starts building d10 and goes from there.

This is very true with ops and also ops and ensembles struggle with timing of large scale pattern changes. Both our regions are dealing with what appears to be a stubborn WAR through d10 or so. That feature alone keeps my expectations low in the MA. However, it's all part of what should be a flip towards extensive high latitude blocking as the WAR gets pushed into the NAO region. Might take a couple storms to do it. Just no way to know this far out. IF (big if) you believe the GEFS' progression, north america goes from this at d10: To this at d15: What can go wrong? Everything... lol. What is my best guess? I do believe the ens guidance has the progression right but how quickly it gets to being REALLY good is up for much debate. My total WAG and best guess is the GEFS is too fast but it's coming anyway. We'll know in 5 days when d15 becomes d10. Ens have been pretty good through d10 but have really missed things (good and bad) beyond d10. I'm rooting for you guys (like always). I hope you guys get smoked before the month is out. ETA: 0z EPS looks very similar to the GEFS d15. GEPS is a little slower with knocking down the WAR. I generally stick to the EPS/GEFS combo and when they look mostly identical it usually means they have it mostly right. If they diverge or anything looks like it's going to screw things up I'll be quick to say as much. For now it's hard not to feel good about late Jan and possibly all of Feb.

My guess is some sort of lift or convection briefly mixed winds. Reminds me of the temporary breeze you feel in front of a shower. Today's precip was upper level and instability driven. Curious what direction the breeze was out of.

I will take the ICON more seriously with future storms. It picked up on the trailng piece first and also did very well with gradients and ptype etc. All models were too dry leading in. Overall the icon was pretty accurate and consistent.

We're close. I'm on the norbeck side of Rockville and have 11.4. Still snowing and sticking. Lol. Silver spring/wheaton/rockville/derwood did very well. We all have about the same. Very memorable storm.

The ironic thing is the reason the snow totals ended up being much higher than we thought is the same reason it wasn't cold smoke. Lol. I'm good with that. The afternoon snow was very high ratio.

The outer band moved around a lot but the 12z run today showed a bullseye out in winchester and wv panhandle. Was too low. Eta: euro missed the leesburg/upper moco/hoco jackpot between 18-0z. Upper level stuff is really hard to nail placement. That type of precip is almost always a nowcast deal

Euro nailed the band out there. Underdid qpf but placement was perfect. Euro well with qpf leading in. Was showing .65 iad/.70 dca/.50 bwi (going off memory). Not bad at all.

6.5 with round 1 and 4.9 with round 2 so 11.4". Winding down tho so a foot prob won't happen. What a disaster.

Prob a transformer if i had to guess. Not seeing any strikes on lightningmaps.

The icing would be for the big moco-hoco deathband to hold together and rotate through DC as the pivot completes. My guess is no but every conservative guess i've made has been wrong

Afternoon moco death band(s) exceeded my wildest expectations. Incredible storm on all levels. Tracking for days and serious overperformance. Rare occurrence...

10.5" official. 4" since 3pm (very high ratio) and 10" sitting on all elevated hard surfaces. There are going to be double digit totals all over dc/nova/md burbs. Amazing. Want a foot...might happen

This upper level piece tops the entire waa piece with the fun factor.

It feels like i've been watching snow fall continuously for over 24 hours

Lol. Bad geography on my part. Outer band near front royal is pulling east now. What am amazing and extremely localized storm

Moco is getting raked. Radar looks like yellow french fries

Outer band in wv panhandle is moving east now. Turn has begun and slp off the coast is pulling away. Normally i'd say expect radar to fall apart over the next 2 hours but all bets are off on this one. This storm already broke all the rules. Why stop now?

Brings up a good question... what is DCA reporting now?

I left one out... roads caved TWICE lol