Bob Chill

TPV placement is interesting and one of the reasons I'm interested in general. Pretty big +NAO but the tpv squishes the flow and crushes heights off the martimes. Pretty jacked up way to get blocking but for our purposes, it is blocking and would force storm track much more laterally than steep troughs and WARs. You guys up north don't have to sweat that stuff as much. We're always right on the edge of development here when things turn the corner and head north. I'm tired AF of that. Lol. Squish the flow to our NE and we can do pretty well with west or SW approach trajectory. Much bigger precip shields are possible too. God I'm sick of chasing little magic marker stripes on the cold side of storms too.... gah

Pretty interesting stuff showing on ens means and even fantasy ops. Not snowstorms but the height pattern. Major confluence signal. I'm not sure if that's even the right word here. Instead of a bowl, ens are showing compressed flow over a fairly large part of the conus. It's another way to get a nice event and it doesn't even need big synoptics. I'm not implying a heater is on the way or anything too weenie. Just that I can easily envision what a path to victory looks like with the general ideas being tossed around now. Late feb/early Mar upglide/overrunners are typically MUCH juicier than Jan-early Feb. We'll see how it goes but if things go down the advertised path, it's a different pattern than we've seen all winter and I like it a lot more than compact steep amplified hills.

It's a negative energy thing. Quantum entanglement is real. I don't claim to understand it but those who walk around in a cloud of negativity open the door for universe to help them out in notsogood ways. This post is 50% joke and 50% real from my personal experience. Doesn't cost anything to be a positive thinker. Even if it doesn't change the universe, it makes life a helluva lot more rewarding.

Hey now! That was quick. I haven't compared any ens run over run but the potential down the line didn't exist at all really and now there is a bit of convergence in speeding up the timing. Keep an eye on that part. This "warm" period may end up being a bit shorter than all of us first thought.

Could never pull it off this year. By the time the good windows for ensemble bowl looks hit reasonable belief ranges, reality was just another progressive steep hill amplification. Without a -AO it's hard to get the big bowl but def happens. 2013-15 had a lot of it. The most common scenario is the center of tpv dropping southward over MN or the lakes and not Dakotas or west then having any kind of ridge extension above it to make it travel laterally and not punch back north like the default track. Carves out a deep cold bowl of air where NS vorts either have to go over or under it but not thru it. Just couldn't pull it off. Got close even in real time but never got right (yet, still time. Bowls can happen thru late March)

All my experience in this silly game tells me the exact same thing. We had our standard compressed cold/active period and now it's time to let it all go... but I can't shake the intuitive feeling. Maybe it's snowflakes falling. Maybe it's my subconscious weenie. Maybe it's the DMT. Not sure

I've grown to love the back half of snow climo season. You get these killer warm days where you can start knocking out spring projects but just as quick as the warmth comes, it can get kicked right back out with a threat. Late Nina style winters that had front side cold can def flip warm and never come back. That's prob favored. My gut says the epo isn't done. I'm expecting the epo and pna ridges to come back into view or overhead within 2 weeks. Until then, time to start fencing my back yard and get ready to grow food.

Any strong cutter with the correct track will pass through the 50/50 region. It's a climo thing. 50/50s happen all the time but are usually transient meaning they are just passing by the sweet spot. When timing is linked up with something upstream, a 50/50 goes from completely unnoticed to the most important thing in Ji's life. We don't just need 50/50s. We need them linked up with other stuff. So basically, in a progressive pattern, you need 2 swift moving targets to be in the proper place at the same time. Tall order and often why they don't work. It's not bad luck. It's statistical probability. Blocking will lock at 50/50 in place. We still need 2 things to link up but only one is moving in that scenario. Far better odds and why we drool over that stuff

Pretty good broad look analysis identifying a common problem and why it's a problem. Anytime shortwaves are zipping north of us, there is a period of return flow sucking warm mid level air up from the south. Even with insitu cold underneath and overhead, it's an efficient airmass rotter and not something to ever be ignored at our latitude. North of us can get plenty of snow with return flow stuff. We usually get rain. Eta: Models can't resolve this stuff far in advance though. There have been countless times in the past where those NS vorts magically appear and disappear in the mid range. With a NS dominant pattern you always need to be looking at those when it counts

One thing we've fought consistently ever since things got going in early Jan is extremely small areas good lift and qpf. It's all little frontogen, jet streaks, or upglide stuff in very small target zones. Drilling down 2+ days in advance is just an exercise in watching noise and letting your brain fill in trends and blanks when there may not be any. I'm done tracking 50mi wide swaths until nowcast time. ROI sucks otherwise. Lol

I'm with CAPE's thoughts. The front sets up a nice wedge of cold surface and mid level air for a very basic isentropic upglide snow maker. This is the escape hatch and possibly the main show. This type of snow event does not rely heavily on synoptics from the coastal. This is where my eyes are until guidance locks into the low prob unblocked coastal runner.

Well, I've never seen either of you make an optimistic post about anything really. It's all doom and gloom. Or at least some sort of pessimistic connotation. I'm sure there are inspirational nuggets randomly hidden in the mix but you can't hide from a post history. When 90% are negative and pessimistic about everything, I'll call a spade a spade. Some people are glass half full and some are half empty. Me personally, I'm a 3/4 full kind of person about everything I do. Perception is reality. We all choose our own

Yeah, but not a single person here is surprised at your complete lack of optimism 24/7/365. Somebody has to make up for all that bad energy or it really will never snow again

I've never owned any thermo that remains accurate in direct sun. Even the ones that swear they do. I don't think they accountanted for increasing climate change sun angle in their design

We could have a 50" storm and PDI will still be #1 for me. When I hit the garage door opener shortly after sunrise, my life changed forever. I had never seen such a spectacle and I immediately became addicted to big storms. The desire to experience them only grew stronger during the decades following. For me, PDI truly was a life changing event. In a good or bad way is hotly debatable

Flush hits require more than what has been offered so on the balance, we're actually doing pretty good. Better than most similar years. Northern stream winters are always frustrating and always leave you feeling that it should have been MUCH better... if just "fill in blank" worked out. I look at it a little different. Any all snow event is a win. Any snowfall over 4-5" is a big win. We could repeat this same exact pattern every winter for 10 years and 1 or 2 will be really big, most avg at best but kinda lame, and some making you want to gently nudge little bunnies off your lawn. Problem is, there's no way to predict any of that in advance. You just gotta roll with the punches and see what sticks. Any time there's amplified flow with the right trajectory and/or axis, a big storm is possible. Not predictable at long leads. Not obvious with the longwave features. But still happen. That chance has been on the table and is still on the table for as far as you can see. But never lose sight of the fact that most if not all chances will be janky and not classic.

Whenever we sit in progressive NS flow (often AF lol), you have to mentally approach it with an open mind to what "can pop up at any moment". Just because nothing is there for a couple days on ops isn't a reason to close the blinds. 40 degree 850 temps and no cold north? Yea, slam that f'r shut. Revolving door of cold fronts where each pack enough cold mid level air on the heels to keep us in the game? That's like our default state in a non-shutout pattern. Lol

Gfs does a really good job sometimes. I really like the recent upgrade for winter wx. One of the common errors is speed of fronts and how south or east they get d2-4. But that's easy to work with. When it's the eastest, move a little westest and you prob nail it.

Ever since the turn if the year, practically every event (real or digital) has been sneaky and jacked up. That's not changing unless the NAO decides it's time. It's def disappointing seeing ops dry paint but unless there's a big storm patten (haven't seen one this year really), any event in the next 10 days is going to be sneaky and weird. Just keep our column supportive of snow as much as possible and let the chips fall. That's what I see. No discrete window or shortwave.

You know this stuff backwards and forwards but Ive been seeing a trend towards putting a single piece of guidance too far above everything else just because. I don't like it at all. It kills good discussion. Using recent past performance of ops to definitively judge future performance is almost always a mistake. This game has never worked that way except when the euro dominated the mid range accuracy. Those days are long over. All ops are good and bad at different things. Since the atmosphere is nearly infinitely complex, it's impossible to know exactly what causes an op to stand out on a specific setup. It is always best to use all available guidance then use your brain to finish the job. Model hugging is an exercise in getting egg on your face. Don't believe me? Just ask DT.

You got some STIFF competition my friend

The only way to get to the bottom of this is to start a thread at the beginning of each month to discuss how/when we are going to start monthly wx threads.

This one has a pretty clear setup for the NW to overperform and burbs to not be disrupted at all except for wet roads. A few small shifts away from impact closer in but few if any ice events like this have amounted to much and this spans many years. Eta: there was def a path to a disruptive event up and down 95. I'm just not seeing it anymore. If everything lined up, it would be pretty apparent. Not chasing a "maybe" under 3 days out.

@WxUSAFI'm cautious af entertaining the bowl idea but I think it's finally going happen. We kept seeing it pop on ens but ops on fantasy land never really agreed. By the time the "carve" was supposed to happen it was a week away. This has been happening for at least 7-10 days on guidance from my rip and reads. Now we're seeing fantasy gfs constantly dropping the height hammer. If there's a big storm in our future, my guess is it won't happen until the big carve reaches its apex and starts retreating. An event like the Midwest is seeing this week would be the way. Pajamas backwards and stuff