Bob Chill

One of the big reasons I started wanting to participate less last few years is exactly whats going on today (and any day) there's a mid range possibility. Tension and hand wringing about who gets a jackpot when it's not even clear if we're going to get anything at all... People get very very far ahead of themselves when things are tense and it really does suck the life out of me. I mean sure, if a nearby jackpot is seemingly locking in inside of 72 hours.... beat that ish to death. Right now all anybody should care about is being in the game or not. Not counting your chickens in a 50 mile wide swatch of digital heavies on a storm in the mid range. I can't participate in that at all because its not appropriate for where we are on the clock. Waste of time and energy but that's just me.

Get a grip man. You're certain it's definite the cities won't get a flush hit 5 days in advance and now your feeling the fizzle beyond that? Are you listening to yourself? You're just walking around here dropping moist blankets on autopilot. Seems like an attempt at reverse psychology.

After hearing about how bad the ICON is for days, I have a hunch the narrative changes going forward.

Loudoun and fdk people are 1-2 That's because you guys aren't nice enough to wx models and ma nature. I can't help that

The thing that's bothering me the most about this storm is we just went 2 for 2. I mean sure, there's a strong case that the universe owes us some storms after some of the recent debacles. But still... 3 for 3? Idk man. We are who we think we were and stuff

Yeah man, this is odd. Haven't had a chance to look at everything but the rip and read shows something strange under the hood on this one. This isn't that far out in time to have the big 3 global ops and ens disconnect. Especially the same way? For now I'm going to keep it simple. Just get the shield here somehow some way. Cold is here. On the move but plenty of cold for front side something. Seems premature to be worrying about a narrow 20" stripe of digital snow from a storm that could end up anywhere still

Oh wow. Thank you for this man! I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to things like that last few years. Didn't realize this and yes, this does make a big difference in the way I look at model runs with storms now. Maybe I'll just do what it says to do on page 3 of the weenie handbook and hug the snowiest model and toss everything else. We're on a heater anyways. .

Quick and dirty.... Global ops are high(er) resolution mid/long range models. They create a detailed movie every 6-12 hours Ensemble controls are lower resolution versions of their respective ops but run with identical data at initialization as their respective global ops. When ensemble controls have a significantly different outcome by d4-5 than the operational, the most likely culprit is the high resolution of the op is prob overdoing something. A clue that things are more complicated than they may seem and always tells me to pay closer attention to details Ensemble means contain an average of 25-50 low resolution members that each run with slightly different data (perturbations or something like that) than their respective ops and controls. Main reason ens means exist is errors early or at initialization get magnified out in time. Little mistake early = big change later. With Ensemble suites the errors get smoothed (hopefully) and the ens mean output is statistically more likely to happen than the op or controls beyond 4-5 days

Def don't listen to this guy. He's a dum dum

Ah! Not carbon copies or anything but for sure strange and similar with the entire track/progression. I'll have to look at the Jan 2000 h5 maps tonight. Interesting.

I'll clarify. In on snow chance for weekend until it's confirmed no go. Out on the Miller B that cross dressed as a Miller A on the 6z gfs

Maybe for you. Where I come from it's never too early for LSD. Maybe too early for 3 tabs tho... uh oh ... hmm.... brb

Gfs has a southern stream type storm and track in the east but tracks first through Manitoba, Des Moines, St Louie. Not much of a jump/redevelop at all either. Not saying anything is impossible but when I can't recall a reasonable similar scenario at any time in the past, my doubt meter spikes.

Yea, I'm not sure that post was well thought through. Now I have to root for union bridge busts. I didn't make these rules. Just following.

What made the storm (fail) so memorable was Boston had like 10 feet of snow already and we had basically nothing. Every damn storm missed and went north and every damn storm dumped a mountain. Then Vday weekend came along and cleared the table of that ish. The rest nobody forgets. Haha

@psuhoffman @CAPE You guys remember back in 2015 the week leading into the superbowl in early Feb when there was a northern stream shortwave originally tracking from Indianapolis ESE into our area? We tracked it for about 5 days. Started off with a sweet pass south of us.Very unusual track with suppressive flow. That kept bugging me and sure enough, suppression backed off in the short range and it tracked north of us and destroyed Boston. This weekend reminds me of that. I starkly remember thinking to myself back in 2015 that if that type of setup ever shows up again, that shortwave better start off passing pretty far south in the mid range... we'll see... Eta: that might have been the storm that inspired @Jebman to post the most hilarious rambling rant against Boston that has ever been written. Anywhere. Lol

Idk Yoda, when the h5 vort panel looks like this at hr120 (6-7 shortwaves compressed in a tiny area of the globe), it's safe to assume that it didn't get to the right place, so where it goes from there is likely less right.

The best analysis I can give right now has to do with the people here and not the upcoming upper level setup... The "personality" on winter wx that showed up right before the Monday storm hasn't gone anywhere. Sneaky busy flow has the potential to go from apparent nothingness to wtf omg then back to nothingness and repeat ad nauseum in the mid-long range. Just let time pass and let it all happen until some sort of consensus shows up. We can easily get a big storm out of nowhere or have what seems to be a long track evaporate in a blink. We simply don't have the tech and tools yet to make real sense of the flow and shortwaves beyond 3-4 days in this regime. For me, all I care about is the "general idea" of busy flow with highs and lows in good enough places in the longwave pattern.. Then just pass time until one becomes "real". Sure doesn't look like a 1 and done small window to me. So if one fails, it doesn't matter nearly as much. Heck, maybe a fail becomes a beast 50/50. Not all fails are bad and multiple chances seem almost certain at this point.

Were you on Mars or something on Monday? Southern stream mauling. Come on man. Your posts are bad enough when they have accuracy. This post is plain stoopid

From a hobby perspective, 2013-14 will always be my favorite tracking winter unless it gets topped at some point. That year it all. Ice, snow, bay freeze, below zero, acceptable to exceptional snow totals each month from dec-bitter end of march, multiple types of events from all angles and dangles. I literally got sick of tracking in late March. Never thought it was possible. For that reason alone, it's my personal holy grail year of winter wx tracking in the mid atl.

It can def be our reality but make no mistake, we can also sit in a good stable setup for longer than models think. That 100% happens but heartbreaks are more memorable than good hemispheric patterns. We've had multiple periods in the past that are close to or exactly like what is being shown. One thing they all had in common is they had staying power. Even when lr models tried to break it all down. It's just been a while but that's how our cycles work. Hot streaks and cold streaks embedded into long time cycles. Based on the last week, we are prob already on a hot streak. Sure, fail is always an option but the entire reason this place exists in the first place is to experience a hot streak with a good longwave setup. Don't let recency fail bias cloud your thoughts this time. It truly is different... finaly... At least in the upper levels. Snowfall is more predicated on chaos and luck from here

No big signal on the gefs but one notable change down the line is it now connects the pna to epo ridge. That is the vodka cold setup JB has been predicting every year for as long as the interwebs have been around. Bay freeze pattern. Especially considering the time of year. Even with the super cold look in the upper levels, precip panels remain busy through the end of the run. I'd like to think simple statistics will push one or more of these shortwaves into position for another storm. You and I do the lite beer thing with cold and precip. If the gefs has it right, we get both

If you watch the h5 vort loops, you'll see shortwaves zipping around or spinning all over the CONUS. At one point on the GFS I counted 5 in just the US. All models are doing it too. Extremely complex as you go out in time. This is important to keep in mind. The gfs got to the big storm through a series of shortwaves carving then finally a stream phase. Any mistake and the stream phase prob doesn't happen... Did the gfs nail super busy active flow for 10 straight days? Heh Long tracks rarely if ever have busy flow like this. Expect volatility and sneakyness for as far out as we can see.

If the stars align and I hit climo snowfall by end of Jan I'm satisfied for the year unless something big comes along. Having it happen during the heart of our cold climo/low sun angle is a huge treat and rarely happens. Big bonus points there. Even our good Jans usually have light events. Widespread warning level storms are hard to come by until wavelengths do their thing in Feb I had low expectations like everyone else this year but Nina's can deliver arctic air here during the first 6-8 weeks of met winter sometimes. That's typically their saving grace when we do get ok totals or a few good storms. You can never rule out that possibility a month or more in advance for any reason. It's always a piece of the Nina puzzle that can make a big difference between warm/snowless or compressed cold period with some good fortune with snow. I didn't like Dec and had that sinking feeling. Pac air yawnfests are getting old. Models never showed anything super ugly though when I checked but it was always not far from ok down the line. Late Dec when ens started locking into real cold air in NA and a mechanism to push it eastward, my optimism grew. Now there appears to be a mechanism to lock in the cold that the models locked in on building. More optimistic by the day...

Seems like a lock. Models should start trending stronger with the blocking from here and remove purples and pinks north of NYC here shortly