Bob Chill

For overall winter flavor, my top analogs are 83-84, 03-04, 05-06. Gun to head, Dec will be in play this year but being in play and actually snowing are separate discussions lol. Like I alluded to last week with my wag, warm periods will be warm+ and overwhelm any chance at a BN DJF but the cold periods will be sharp. Maybe one month ends BN. My gut says Jan is the best chance at that but recent (persistant) trend is late cold so March is probably more logical. Just spitballin' there. If the Nino hangover guess works out then a stj storm in Jan or Feb could make the winter memorable by itself. I like Terp's forecast in general but I can't stop thinking the Npac LW pattern won't be classic Nina. A tendency for Aleutian ridging poleward and further east than classic is my against the grain thought. Downstream it would bully the classic SE ridge placement further east. SE ridge delaying and shunting aggressive cold shots has been a real thorn last handful of years. Models have been terrible in mid/long range with that. My guess is that will still be a problem but just less of one than recent years. At times it won't be a problem at all due to my upstream guess. Lots of guessin out of me this year lol

Predicting nina climo with a warmish background is a pretty safe and easy guess this year. My problem with that is over the last 5-10 years there has been an against the grain longwave feature more often than not and few if any point it out in advance. Mega epos, ninos strangely behaving like Nina's and vice versa producing confusing periods of met winter, pac jets on meth, and all that jazz. So what's it going to be this year? What's the key unusual feature(s) that will rear its head? I'm not a big fan of right for the wrong reasons with snowfall. Personally, I'd much rather see a long ranger blow the snow side of forecast but nail the red headed stepchild in the upper levels. That's a show of deeper skills and ability to think critically no matter what books and other people say (IMHO only ofc). Far easier said than done but we're in a string of winters with unexpected dominent LW features. There seems to be a propensity to buck climo. Chaos or more volatile climate? Beats me but things going as planned seems to be no longer part of the plan. Hahaha lol I'll take a crack at it.... No deep analysis here. Just intuition and observation. In a nutshell, I think the -epo is coming back. That doesn't mean easy snow without precise alignment. If anything it favors cold enough for snow but it doesn't want to snow lol. Below normal temps for DJF are never coming easy again for large swaths of the NH I don't think. Oceans are fighting that. But cold outbreaks in the east are always possible. I expect some in each month of DJF. Storm track is always a problem so it will be again but my intuition says there will be some setups that look more like a nino than a nina. A hangover of sorts. I don't expect an active or hibernating STJ but i do believe it will be present at times and briefly remind us of a nino. Lastly, I have a hunch we get some blocking and it will include Dec. Doesn't mean cold and snow. Just means tracking won't be boring or hopeless. On the balance I believe this winter will continue being weird and make people scratch heads but in the end it will be acceptable. That's all I got.

The WORST fookin invention was cheap motion detection floods. Walking the dog at night last 5 years in Rockville was a game of cat and mouse with floods. When we bought our Rockville house in 02, our rear neighbors had 2 floods on 24/7 in the back yard. Omg annoyed the hell out of me but I was new to the hood so didn't want to be a jerk and complain so I did the next smartest thing.... Drank about 6 beers on my patio and wandered up the yard and tresspassed into theirs with a 5 gal bucket to stand on around 1am. Then gently unscrewed bulbs till they went out. That was it. They never screwed them back in for 20 years lol. Same bulbs were in the fixtures when we sold. So why did they even have them on in the first place? Well, they clearly had no f'n idea either hahahaha

The May one was more intense and vivid but you guys in the dmv got hosed by clouds. Last night was pretty epic tho but that may deal down here in swva was astounding and I've seen NLs in Canada back in 96. Those were a pure 2 tab acid trip. May was a modest shroom trip but the location made it kinda mind boggling

Reminds me of a night in college

Wow. What a night. We went down to the lake and it was stunning. Naked eye no problem but long exposure pics kill it lol.

Had the brightest red wave come through just now. Could see the spikes with naked eye and total red sky. This is wild lol

My son is taking these pics. I'm not good at the photo thing. This one is 10 seconds. Milky way really shows up nice.

Pretty decent down here in Penhook around 830-9. 5 second exposure on this one. Stars are really bright tonight. Little to no light pollution to contend with.

I'm kinda liking what I see rn and what it makes me think about. To be perfectly clear... lol... I DO NOT expect a memorable winter compared to longer term history (like the last 30 years ) but I'm feeling strangely confident in a memorable winter in comparison to the last 7 lol. And I kind of agree with webberdude about 2014. I've been quietly thinking about it. Not a redux because we had some sig anomalous stuff around AK that whole winter. A "Lite Version" is what I'm thinking. Fast moving outbreaks into the upper Midwest pushing into the east on schedule. Maybe shortwaves hit when things are fresh like periods of 2013-15, or maybe they hit when flow turns late like 93-94. Either way produces actual winter precip and personally, I'd just like to see frozen stuff in general and not get bogged down in the "if only and what if" thought loops. Not to mention how fun this place is when a 3" snowfall produces unhappy bitter posts 4x1 over those who are just happy it snowed. I'm starting to think that an entire cohort of people only feel good when they are deeply unhappy surrounded by lots of company. Time alive is the most valuable commodity we have. I don't waste those minutes focusing on the negative and my appetite for seeing/hearing it has vanished lol If things are in fact going to actually behave like winter, even if volatile and streaky, there should be far better airmasses around the eastern half of the conus this winter. Which shouldn't take much considering lol. IMO- the plague of last winter on the EC was a product of persistently flawed longwave timing. The alignments and timing were out of sync and it affected the entire corridor. The ingredients kept getting tossed in the salad bowl but some dummy kept pouring ketchup on it instead of ranch or vinaigrette. We can argue the elephant, and it is part of it imo, but when the entire 95 corridor suffered the same flaws up and down, it's more likely just that way it goes sometimes. Dems da'brakes son lol If the pac jet has a propensity to buckle before hitting the west late this fall into mid Dec, it will make me feel a lot better about my gut intuition. I'm not going to trust any long range guidance though. 3 years of getting killed by that is enough. I'm not wasting any time trying to watch or predict a favorable shift in the pac jet if it's being a little bitch again. LR models haven't got that right in years lol.

When we first found the land we bought on leesville lake (lake access no frontage) we had no idea if we would "fit in" on a personal level. All kinds of preconceived ideas of "how it is". I was embarrassingly wrong lol. Spending a week in the area in summer 2022 was all it took. It's unique here with super rural remote land surround by pockets of recreational 2nd properties of all types and sizes. Our penhook property is in a locals haven and the weekenders are similar. The community were in until we build our house is 80% weekenders and 20% full timers. People are a lot of fun and super casual. No million dollar personalities here but plenty close by. Smith mtn lake in the summer draws in A LOT of what we moved away from but it's people having fun and not commuting to work. Still gets crowded in the Westlake area on weekends. Easy to avoid in totality because the crowded areas are teeny compared to expansive country. We don't spend much if any time in those areas during peak season. Our part of leesville lake is always deserted with minimal development. It's awesome if being left completley alone is your jam. Life is a trip lol. Eta: the #1-3 reasons we relocated here is cost of living. Going from $8k/yr prop taxes to $800 is liberating AF. Car insurance dropped 40%. Groceries are soooo much cheaper and far better. Local grass fed beef is everywhere and beautiful ribeyes are usually $8/lb or less. So many examples of lower cost it's shocking how bad I was bent over in Rockville lolol

Thanks man! We absolutely love it down here. Feel completely at home and the people are wonderful. Need to change lanes? Oh, just use a blinker. Need to pull out in "traffic"?... first person that can make a space does with a wave. Loading lumber alone at the yard? Employees and customers together come over and help and there is no saying "no". After many decades in DC metro, you forget that the vast majority of people out there are truly kind and helpful. Sad but true for me. It's getting kinda hairy down here honestly. Flickering lights and long drawn out gusts last 30 mins. If it gets to damage level I'll take a vid and upload it

Gettin pretty nautical down here in Penhook. Def some gusts in the 30s last hour. Under a wind adv and flood/spinny watch. Mentions of landslides in the AFD. Lol. If things really start to rip I'll head over to sm mtn lake and get some pics. I'll be careful with the storm surge

Been in MD since Sunday taking care of all kinds of stupid stuff related to our relocation lol. Dang kids Heading to penhook tomorrow. Thinking about spending Friday in sandy level on the east side of smith. Not like it matters all that much because it will just be windy rain at the worst. Kinda liking the center pass to the west. Could mix the east winds pretty good if the depression is still strong enough. Could be a fun time on the ridges of western NC for some peeps. @WxWatcher007I enjoyed your last chase vids. This storm is a different animal so be careful when you're standing in the middle of the street during the eyewall approach. I want to see the destruction in real time so maybe livestream before you end up in Southern GA with a 100mph tail wind. I have an old motorcycle helmet if u need it

Intuition is telling me this winter will be OK. We've been on a multi year stretch of stale cold. Always slower and shallower than first anticipated. Setups have been half decent at times but I can't count how many times mid level flow had already turned sw too far in advance before a shortwave arrives. It feels like if all shortwaves arrived just 12-18 hours sooner than they actually did (like models often showed in the mid range lol), stats would look a lot better. Not great but not in the gutter either. Subtle variances in lw trough alignment can always mess with us and we've been getting our asses handed to us. WDI index is high to win a few even if thru dumb luck Before 2015 got rolling in Feb, we failed in similar ways quite a bit. Once the lw trough axis shifted things heated up. 2015 isn't an analog in any way to me. Just using it as an example of failing with stale cold or mid levels scouring top early. My total wag is this winter will have several condensed periods that feel like real winter. Periods of -epo/+pna make a lot of sense to me like the climate models are starting to think about now. Counter-intuitive surprises are probably here to stay in any enso IMHO. Good luck guessing that right year after year if it keeps happening lol. Volatility is baking in it seems lol We had some see-saw winters sandwiched between the big nino years of 02-03/09-10. My wag is a mix of that stuff. Haven't thought much about it. We'll see how it goes

Got hit with a couple nice localized blobs this AM on the east side of smith mtn. Over an inch since 5am. One of these years (alive or dead lol), a noreaster is going to bank up against smith and dump on us. Rain on east flow overperforms regularly. Bout tired of that S lol

Hey Wx Fam, wanted to post a quick update. House in Rockville is sold and we're out of MD. Sale closed on Thursday. Spent 4 months getting the house ready to sell and it was on the mkt for all of 5 days lol. I thought I would be more emotional considering we lived there for 21 years. I feel more relief and freedom than anything... so far anyways. It's going to take a year to build on our land in Sandy Level so we got a place nearby in Penhook. Its a really cool little place too with free access to a boat ramp on Smith Mtn Lake. Our son is going to live there full time and wife and I will split our time between the properties. Only 20 minutes apart and that's quite a feat in an area as rural as this. I'll post more later this fall/winter than the last 2 years. Nothing big in life comes without great work and sacrifice. I think 2 straight years is enough of that. Time to slow it down and take it all in.

Hey peeps, been workin non stop on getting rockville ready to sell and our VA land ready to build. Good God has it been hot tho.... lol. I mean F and S it's been hot. Lol. Got hit with an incredible sunset last night. A real drop you to your knees kind of sight. Could hardly see it through a 4" deep sweat waterfall but the pic came out nice hahahaha

Hey peeps, down south in VA right now. Wife and I ran out last night for blizzards at DQ and ran into this scene at our favorite overlook around 10pm. Lights in the gap is smith mtn dam. . Holy crap. Best shroom trip without shrooms ever! ETA: wife took all the awesome pics while I stuffed my fat face

I was 9 and it changed my life forever. Other than intense cold, the 70s weren't good for winter wx here. I remember when it started. It was different than all the others. Really cold and just came in and never stopped. I opened the garage door shortly after sunrise and walked up to the wall of snow and thought it was the most incredible thing I had seen. No lookin back after that day.

Wife and I went up and down for years about where to settle. We thought thru just about everywhere. We kept getting hung up on tradeoffs without really understanding what the top 3-5 things both us really wanted were. Once we figured that out it got much easier. My top 5 were affordability/low taxes, minimal property restrictions, mountain view+close to big lake, private road access, and no sounds of industry or traffic. With snow I decided as long as we live in the northeaster zone I'll experience some biggies while still happily making my living and living my life outdoors. We're both snow weenies but my affliction is more more serious and hers much more playful lol. But at the end of day, moving somewhere (anywhere) that averages 50"+ of snow a year came with way too many tradeoffs for us. Terrible spring weather and ground conditions being my biggest reason. We both decided that if we were going to move for snow it has to be go big or go home because in between is a net negative for our lifestyle. I'm sure plenty of people kinda wondered why we went south lol. It wasn't for warmer weather as it's actually cooler there with summer temps which is amazing. We never have to run the AC in our RV after 10pm. Always in the 60s at night in the forest. We ended up south because of affordability, super lax zoning (building permits only required for liveable space), and being smack dab next to a mountain and a lake. We never looked near sm mtn lake until we did the top 5 lists. Looking back we couldn't have found a better spot for us and our goals in life. We're different people so my way is just that. But consider doing the top 5 lists and using that to objectively guide the search. It took us 2 years to find the spot and half of that time was spent looking when neither of us really knew what we wanted beyond pretty pictures of country land lol

Long range is always volatile and unreliable. Models nailed most of Dec/Jan in general from way out in time. What really stung this year was a combination of holy grail expectations and applying that to all long range guidance. When we thought the upper level mean pattern out in time looked "classic nino" there were still plenty of problems lurking. Models were never cold and snowy under the hood. The only period that lit up 10+ days out with both snowfall and analogs was Jan. Other than that it's looked pretty bad to me. I keep saying this but if we want snowfall, there is only one reliable feature that's a well placed/stable -AO. It can and will snow in any enso state when the AO is below -1. Conversely, an AO in excess of +1 can eliminate snow in any enso. This speaks for itself imho. Not hard to see the correlation this year lol Something that really stands out is how bad models missed the abruptness and magnitude of the + moves from 10 days out. That's a big reason we spent so much time in a near shutout pattern. When the AO skyrockets, it's at least a 2 week reset before things can get cold and line up again and that includes going negative first. I'm thinking this winter's underperformance isn't as complicated as first thought. The entire big winter thesis beyond enso was blocking. Dec was a big warning shot that wasn't happening as expected. Then things just kept repeating. If the AO stayed negative in Dec like big winters, those wet southern waves may have felt a lot different imo.

I always collect repeating patterns in my head. The pendulum still always swings imo. This is what I've observed in repetition over the last 7 years or so: The most common place for legit polar/arctic air south of the polar regions has been Russia and China. The wrong side. This has been costly in the snowfall dept because of the pac jet influence and the fact that avg continental air that takes its time is not what gets it done down here. Troughs have consistently not progressed east as fast as they have in the past. I personally do not think this is permanent. It's a cycle that will break. Probably soon. With a warm Atlantic it may be more common for troughs to move slow and pull north easier but imho, we will have periods of legit continental cold carving and parking again. When I don't know. We will also have cold bottled up on our side and Siberia will have some warm winters. It's coming either next year or eventually lol. Classic blocking has been absent since 2011. We've had some good blocks but nothing like some of the cycles during the 2000-2011 period. We really haven't had a good cycle in a long time. That's actually normal. There is no doubt some sort of decadal or multi decadal bias with the AO and NAO. Go back thru monthly DJFM data and it's easy to see. 60s great, early/mid 70s bad, late 70s thru mid 80s good, 90s? Lol 1 legit blocky winter with mountains of snow surrounded by epic failure and messy stuff. If 2012 was the end of the blocking cycle, we're prob getting close to another. We'll know in the rear view. Monkey wrenches... lol. I don't bother analyzing winter in any detail anymore until November. Our snowfall setups are fragile AF. Weird things make or break us. And they can do it repetitively. I've read a lot of winter forecasts here and many are incredibly well thought out but they rarely if ever verify the way they are presented except for easy mod/strong enso years. I don't like thoughts getting put in my head anymore because it messes up my observations and expectations. I much prefer to keep an open mind and adjust throughout met winter. I dont die on hills and I cannot make an accurate met winter prediction other than luck and good climo memory lol. Volatility... yep, wx is more volatile now. Pretty certain there. Swings are wild and storms in general have a propensity to boom with qpf instead of bust. Other thread can talk whys. I just accept that it's an influence that must be accounted for. This is probably going to save us with a future Nina or northern stream dominant winter. Nina's get some good cold snow but almost always on the lighter side as organized storms like to go west in Nina's. There sure seems to be more juice/enhancment nowadays with northern stream waves. For these reasons I don't fear a Nina at all. If anything I'm super curious about having a classic Nina right now. Especially if we are moving into a blocking cycle.... Booms... when things line up right we can still go on epic heaters and we certainly will again. We'll probably break the all time single storm snow record here before long. Baroclinicty is often more potent now with Atl SSTs. Things have been out of sync with I95 coastals for a while. Not many nesis storms recently. I have a strong gut hunch some of the storms that make the nesis list in the next 10 years will jaw dropping. Us included. These are just some my thoughts based on everything I've seen. I could be embarrassingly wrong. Maybe what has been repetitive recently is the new normal and it gets worse. Idk. I'll keep watching and waiting. Recency bias kills objective thinking. I don't like some of the things I've seen recently with winter wx but I can say the same thing about every decade I've been alive. I don't know what the future holds but the end of big winters and big storms isn't something I'm remotely considering. If anything, the odds of a record breaking blizzard are probably higher now than they were. Just spitballin.

Instead of wrangling over digital ratios, just use your memory. Imo, because of the start temps in the closer burbs, I don't see how my yard clocks over 10:1 in total without instability or fronto luck (impossible to predict). Euro has been steady with qpf for a while. It doesn't blow that too often this close with a fairly simple wave. So .40qpf seems like a good # there. 10:1 max avg would lay down an honest 3.5-4". Seems like a fair take but we all have our own way

Fits the teles and winter personality. Another event as we lose the -AO fits the mold. Odd year. Events have minimal lead time and pop up in avg setups at best. Jan repeat with warmer temps in between maybe