Bob Chill

CWG boom baby!

Clear skies and 23 in CT lol. Heading south in a few. Chasing the jackpot on this one. Gonna roll thru Columbia first and make sure @WxUSAFis jackin' and then drive thru the center of the death band to Rockville.

These types of events used to be a staple here. 70s-80s had plenty. Looking forward to it. Felt pretty good last week about a couple cold inches. Seems like a lock at this point.

Yessir. All storms must be looked at individually. Models have strengths and weaknesses. From what I've seen, no model is good at nailing volatile NS setups beyond 3 days. All the meaninful development happens inside of that range. Getting the lead in right AND all the fancy stuff is a seismic butt ton of math lol. Climo and odds say a boom scenario is the least likely. Lots of history there. OTOH- we usually get some accum snowfall with setups like this. They aren't remembered because there's usually an underlying disappointment after "the mid range boom runs" lol. My total wag is most of us are good for a cold couple inches. Exactly how is above my pay grade. Lol

Problem is storm type. Volatile NS, thin margins, and development at our latitude. Far far different that the recent fail that lifted out of the gulf. If you were around in 2013-15 winters we had a lot of this stuff and it was never resolved until 72 hours at best. Some of the events those winters actually popped up at 72-96hr leads with no previous signal. The goal posts haven't really changed. Somewhere between a complete whiff and a good storm. Any time you have a setup where models are developing snow basically overhead, don't get married to anything until that development is within 72 hours minimum. These snow events are very complicated from NWP perspective. They have a long history of being phantoms and booms. That said, this setup is our best of the season by far. But it won't be easy on the nerves if you track ops every 6 hours. One of them will almost always look worse or go the wrong way or show the fail option. Full agreement is a short range game

You're not wrong but until 0:0 is off the table, all other ratios don't excite me too much. What we really need to figure out is how to get the 12:0 ratio then we don't have to care about precip anymore.

Think of it the other way around. NS dominant pattern (as shown) is anomalous and likely won't last. The high latitudes are going thru an extreme event and that ripples downstream. Like PSU already said, the ns is the result of the proximity of the TPV. TPVs are massive and suck in and spit out both the NS and polar stream. Being so close is what is dominating the pattern. TPVs don't park over the lakes for long basically ever. Something that I can see making Feb a NS month is what the CFS has been showing. A linked EPO/PNA ridge will almost always result in a NS dominant pattern here because the southern stream is knocked pretty far south. It's not common for a SS wave undercut those ridges and become a beast by itself. Almost always requires a NS feature. Feb 2003 is a good example. There wasn't a ton of blocking. On the means it looks like no blocking but it was there when it mattered. However, favorable storm track was +PNA driven. Jan/Feb 03 has been popping as an analog. Which would be good because it was cold for a long time in Feb/Mar 2003 due to the stable +PNA. Right now weekly and monthly guidance is showing just that for Feb. We'll see how it goes

Most analogs leading into this period were kinda messy and/or some level of missed potential. Jan 04 is the biggest example but nearly all analogs had reasons to be optimistic and pessimistic. Seems to be working out that way in real time. The good thing is most analogs had multiple precip events and that did include all snow some years. My take starting a week ago has been to expect an active period with no clear signals for anything significant. Mixing and/or whiffs are very much on the table. Kinda like what we're seeing play out. I'm really warming up to analog analysis. It identifies max potential and personality of how it got there and what happens after pretty accurately if you can sift thru historical data. I'm finding the most relevant analogs to be very helpful in seeing the forest thru the trees. I have my own personal algorithm for dealing with old analogs where some people hold the factual opinion that it was colder more often and snowed easier when the setups were less than ideal. Next week's depth of cold takes care of that this time but it's an important consideration if you like guessing right lol

Undertow is my fave. So raw and untamed. Made me drive fast a lot lol. Like any new band with a new sound that gets popular.... big production takes over and the gritty raw appeal just goes away. Aenima was still pretty raw and awesome but the change was in motion. Tool became very polished to my ear with Lateralus and 10k days. Lost me as a regular. Lots of bands do this. Rush and RHCP are big examples. Early stuff had a massive following and later stuff did too.... just different people. Countless examples. I loved 311's first 2 releases. Burned them up but man did they fall apart... and become really popular... lol. I have a knack for finding new sounds that I love then watch business run the sound into the ground lol

We drill down too much on the regular lol. Hard not too though. I've changed my ways. I just quick scan beyond 5-6 days and come up with my range of potential outcomes then trim as leads shorten. I don't get excited about anything except a long track until it's locking into a predictable range of outcomes. Usually D4 at the longest. This has completely eliminated my need to spend any time contemplating anything specific that vanishes every 6 hours lol. A good analogy is making stock investments. You find one you like. You track it for a while and get a feel for it in general and decide if it's worth investing in at all. Then you set your entry target. When that hits, it's time to act. I'm only committing to potential events that hit my entry target and my parameters are constantly getting tighter lol ETA: for next week's deal I'll need nearly complete agreement that the western edge isn't going to whiff my yard. Could be under 48 hours b4 I feel confident in this one. Narrow storms with vertical tracks have become one of my least favorite to even look at. I'd rather watch a R/S line put me out of the game on a direct hit than fret over 75 miles of E-W wiggle that divides white yards from frozen mud.

I don't track deep details beyond 5 days anymore. My memory is telling me they're always copies of each other with no deviation. Lower res would deviate thru time. I'm not certain though. Just a memory artifact.

Op and control are identical iirc. Control extends beyond op. Pretty sure that's the only difference.

Loved Tool during their prime. Maynard is a musical genius and Adam Jones is... well... Adam Jones lol. I've mellowed out last 10 years and don't listen to heavy stuff nearly as much but it was a big part of my musical tastes for many years

Name checks out

Why did I have kids?

It's probably more of an artifact of storm track. The stripes can come from different streams but they all look the same. When you see a stripe aligned between 8-9am and 2-3pm, we're hittin on all cylinders here. Those are our cold snows too.

From a "real feel lol" perspective it most likely will. Should get good mixing/turbulence once the sun does its thing. Yesterday was a good reminder about southerly flow+saturated column. Winds near the surface have to fight to touch it. I've personally never witnessed a significant southerly wind event anywhere west of the bay. Every prediction underperforms. Westerlies have it easy. They get tumbled and pushed to the surface. Maybe you can witness some beautiful devastation in your yard today. I'm rootin for ya brother

You and I have have different perspectives on this for geographic reasons lol... but I really don't like vertical tracks. Off the coast or not, they are awful on the nerves leading in and our geography/latitude typically fights my yard. These storms can pop of course but there's a long history of scrapes and whiffs in my memory banks. ONE of these days... oh boy I tell ya... and it's going to be awesome if it happens while I'm still alive... a BIG FAT stripe of snow from Nashville TN to just south of Cape May will happen again... some day.... lol

Analogs are loading up for the d8-11 period. Recent notable dates are Jan 03, 04, and 96. 2003 was wintry but not much precip. Jan 2004 was an inch away from epic. Jan 96 showing up as well but opposite enso so theres that. Nearly all analogs center during periods of winter wx. Majority light/mixy but some impressive dates either way.

I'm pretty optimistic about at least 1 decent event this month. I don't like seeing so many runs with mix lines west of 95 tho. It's been a strong personality trait this winter. Sometimes those are hard to shake. We'll see

CFS monthly looks just as sweet. All 3 global ens are moving in this direction late in their runs right now and it makes sense (at least to me lol) Get the -AO/NAO/EPO combo and we won't have many temp problems. Get those features linked and stable and we can probably stumble drunk into a nice storm. Might be the only way cuz we bout tried errything else man.... sheesh... lol

I'm having doubts of any kind of relax now. Been expecting ens to rebuild or not unbuild the general blocking theme as leads shorten. Happening kind of quick. That's very encouraging. Nobody in here wants to deal with a 1 week wait just to get cold close enough to snow again. This is acceptable for Feb too

Considering the personality of this winter, the last thing on my mind is models locking in suppressed at long leads. Lol. Sure, it could happen any winter for many reasons. This winter doesn't want to carve east with any kind of efficiency. Everything has been "loosening up" in the mid range so far. I won't bet against that until I lose the hand.

They're good for looking at the northern hemisphere and how things could evolve. When I look at the weeklies above it makes a lot sense to me. Epo ridge still there but higher heights/pressure squeezing back into the NAO region. So the idea of blocking flexing after the TPV does the do-si-do around the pole and heads south again. Adds some confidence to my thoughts earlier about how we move thru the month. What the weeklies aren't good for is snowfall/storms or anything specific. I only use them to know whether to close my blinds or not. Right now they remain open.

My guess is the "breakdown" is nothing more than a reshuffle. The closed ridge floating towards Siberia is a bit of a thorn because you can't connect that to the AO/NAO space. Earth won't allow it. Lolol. Maybe it rolls over the top and ends up beefing up a -AO. Maybe it just dissolves and heights build around the pole just cuz. I'm not nearly smart enough to know the how's but I've watched this stuff long enuff to know that this blocking event most likely isn't super anomalous and temporary. It feels more like a setup for multiple reiterations of the same general idea. That said, falling completely apart is on the table so if leads shorten and the blocking idea vanishes it's a big net negative to the future of our winter. Analogs look very active. Lots of mixed events in there but the analogs are screaming precip with a colder profile. Some of the analogs show that it marked the beginning of a very active period like Jan 1982 listed below. Mixy but plenty wintry. Late Jan 82 into early Feb was active too. What the analogs and ens haven't been showing is big dog potential. So seeing active mixy periods with limited big storm potential is a pretty fair take for right now. Something big can pop for sure given the activity but nothing really points towards a big storm yet. If it does, you know I'm all in. But only once my personal algorithm tells me to get excited lol