Bob Chill

Thing is.... those ads aren't random. They are displayed based on an algorithm of relevancy to browsing history. I'll stop there...

Bad traffic doesn't surprise me. When I first moved in 92 there was rarely any legit traffic but all the big resorts were under big expansion/development. Adding 1000s of beds during my time and traffic got really annoying but only during xmas, presidents weekend, and off and on through march by 99. There are only 2 major roads other than I70. I can imagine multi mile backups now... One of the tradeoffs of being the closest majors to Denver. I've regretted not buying a condo 100s of times when I was there. A total delinquent pothead buddy of mine randomly bought a condo for 80k in 93 and rented rooms to cover the mtg. Sold in 2001 for 249k. Lol. If that guy can do it I should have done it x5. Haha

No prob man. Extracting all the memories for my post put me in a really good mood. Feb/Mar are the 2 snowiest months. 4 day window is tight. Odds favor an event during that time. Eiether way there will be at least 3' on the ground in most places above 9500'. Loveland will have 10'+ snow walls in some places. Skiers and snowboarders build gap jumps over the highway. Lol

This is just imho... Vail is actually a crappy place for being a weenie. Views suck until you get up near the top of the gondola. Vail also sits right on I70 and that detracts from the rockies experience. Lastly, Vail village is only at 8k feet. Seems high but it isnt. The valley doesn't get nearly as much snow as the upper elevations. I was never impressed with Vail as a whole. My season pass allowed 10 days a year skiing and I usually used them up just cuz but I always found the skiing at A Basin, Breckenridge, and Keystone to be better on average. Here's my best advice... Consider staying in Breck, Silverthorne, Frisco, or Dillon (all 4 are within 90 minutes from the airport. Incredible views of the 10 Mile and/or Gore ranges and Continental divide. Breck is a really fun town with exactly the party atmoshpere you're prob looking for and massive views in all directions. 9,600' elevation at the base and that makes a big difference in snow totals compared to the vail valley. If budget is a high priority then stay in Silverthorne/Frisco/Dillon. Dillon will have the best panoramic views but only slightly more than the others. One thing that you have to do when driving from the airport is to take hwy 6 over loveland pass and skip the tunnel. Adds 30 mins to the trip unless you spend an hour at the parking area at the top of the pass.... because the alpine environment (12k'+) and views of the divide are truly mind blowing. I used to take the pass on trips to or from Denver every time. It's an addicting place and you will never forget it. If you go then make sure you take pictures and post them here. I'll stare at them daily and can name almost every peak. If you plan on driving around then do a loop over Hoosier and Freemont pass. It takes less than 2 hours and there are an insane number of amazing views. You'll see the highest peak in CO (mt elbert) as well as at least 12 other 14k'+ peaks during the loop. One last thing... there's a snowmobile rental operation near the top of Freemont pass. It's not just a guided trip. You get to rip all over the place. No speed limits... open areas you can do 50-60mph. Colorado is pretty lenient on liability stuff. You get hurt and it's all on you so snowmobile ops don't limit you beyond staying out of avalanche zones...

Gotchya. Nov turned me around too until the +93 AO was prog'd in Dec and subsequently verified. The month came in at +.4 so didnt meet the criteria of a signal. It was just really unnerving. Jan's AO on the other hand... it's not going to take out 1993's +3.5 or anything but it will be over +2. If I looked at just the AO for Dec/Jan with no knowledge of ground truth I would immediately assume snowfall is below or much below avg here.

Yea, and the entire eastern half of the conus has been roasting for ALL of jan. There's areas north of us with nearly +10 anoms for Jan. We aren't far behind. @MN Transplant posted the national Jan anom chart just a day or 2 ago. I've never seen a worse one for Jan in my life. I'm sure there's been worse but I don't remember any off the top of my head. I've come to the conclusion that decoy is completely unable to learn anything from anyone. Period. If it's in his head it's 100% true and that's that. Narrow minded hardhead. It's not even an insult. It's just the truth.

Here's a visual of the pac ssta's in mid Sept. Does this look remotely like a good pac is developing? Not in my eyes at least

I thought the Pac looked sh!tty. Numerical data in nino zones looked sorta encouraging but the visual structure of the anomalies did not look like a nino at all. Especially in Sept. It looked like a nina was building in nino 1-3. 3.4 was warm because the entire western Pac basin was warm. Lol. I wrote off a nino in Sept and was surprised to see many people saying weak and/or west based nino was developing. To my eyes it looked cruddy. It just looked like the wpac was warm across a massive area and 3.4 didn't stand out. I'm not smart enough to know all the complicated mechanics of west based ninos but I didn't see anything that made me think a west based nino pattern was likely this winter. The PDO was crap also in the early fall. Didnt look anything like a +pdo but did trend towards + later in the fall. That's part of what sucked me in because a +pdo (nino or no nino) is a very reliable signal for decent snow in the east. Never really materialized though. I figured the ao/nao would work against us too because persistence is real and we're clearly in some sort of decadal cycle of +ao/nao. I had an open mind but my early thoughts were another +ao/nao year. Nov certainly made me think a -ao was possible but good god did that fail in Dec. My initial guess for the snow contest was around 60-70% of climo at the airports. I shouldnt have changed it (hindsight is accurate AF) but I went just below climo after Nov teasing us. If you look back to the teles and sst anoms in Dec you wouldn't think eastern snow was happening. The NE scored big early as the cold pattern eroded and it's been a dumpster fire up and dowm the coast since mid Dec. 6 straight weeks of fecal matter with glimmers of greener pastures at times.

There are different levels of giving up. I'm 100% done with tracking any lw pattern d10+. It's a complete waste of time and mental energy with no reward. I'll give it a quick 2 minute scan daily but that's about it. A discete event outside of 5 days is another waste of time. Especially marginal or "weird" setups. I'm not saying I think there's no chance at snow because that's silly. 6-7 weeks of realistic climo are left. I'll jump back in if anything actually looks half decent at a timeframe where it's unlikely to significantly degrade. Hasn't happened this year so far except the one good northern tier event.

This would be the biggest disaster in the history of my yard. I'm at just over 3" with my biggest "event" being 1.8". That combined with temps being 100 degrees above normal day in day out is about as bad as it gets. At least cold/dry freezes ponds and I can put my hockey skates on and pretend I'm Dale Hunter.

I barely looked at anything this fall because all signs pointed to a lame year. Then I got suckered into believing we had a chance with the big -AO in Nov and a decent start to Dec. Once the AO flipped +++ I had that sinking feeling but still hung in because we've had a number of storms lately with a +AO and favorable pac. Sinking feeling returned in Dec after the relentless -pna but it was too early to give up. The latest long range ens flip away from -epo cold was the end for me. I knew right then that spending any more than a few brief mins a day is a complete waste of time. Thankfully I got really busy with work stuff and I'm having a great start to 2020. Perfect timing there. I'm done participating unless something realistic gets inside of 5 days or a legitimate good pattern gets inside of 7-9 days. D10+ has made every single one of us look like a fool this year. I've never seen such good agreement completely disintegrate every.single.time. At least 2011-12 never looked good. Those kind of disaster years are far better than this one.

There are times when banter is funny AF and fun to read no matter what the mood is. Then there's times you wish you could get the 5 minutes back that you spend reading lame shitz. Don't get me wrong though, banter free for all is the way it should ALWAYS be. I'm allowed to say it sucks whenever I want tho

This is why you have special powers here

Weather isn't that simple. It's like the stock market. Endless possibilities and chaos rule but we have "tools to make sense out of it" so we try... and try... and try. The real fun starts when we're panicking because a Nina is building and then 95-96 walks in the door again and suddenly Nina's are AWESOME... until the next one.

Nothing? What can you do? People need to feel better about things anyway they can. At the expense of whatever. Banter should be left untouched except for vulgar/profanity/attack kind of stuff. Just pointing out that (IMHO only) it currently sucks a$$. Just an observation. No solution necessary.

So I take a break and come back to take a look and now even the banter thread sucks a$$.

Correct. It's an instantaneous snapshot of sim radar at the time stamp

Exactly. Those panels cover 6 hours of qpf. I always compare the 6hr output to the sim radar panel to get a better idea of the flavor of what type of event ops are predicting. In this case it looks exactly like the nicer waves in JFM of of 2014 & 15.

I like the look on the ens. Don't trust it yet though. We've had a number of LR looks like this last few years and they have an annoying habit of transitioning from confluent W-E oriented h5 patterns to the standard progressive N-S oriented cold fronts as leads shorten. If we get a week of a compressed W-E gradient pattern it will prob snow. Maybe more than once... It will be annoying AF if the period of interest loses the zonal gradient and turns into cold fronts and highs running away 36 hours after they get here.

The hp to the north is like a day and a half too old. Skips east at the perfect time to ruin what would be a chance for a big storm. The last snow to rain deal could have easily been 2-6" before flipping. We're getting some decent looking precip makers this winter but keep failing on temps.

It's possible but requires all models being wrong on temps from 3000 feet to the surface. This should be a good snow event. Any modest winter airmass should get it done. This year has a knack for never being cold enough when it counts

Stoopid south winds at the surface to above 850 leading in is a fatal flaw. It's the reason I've never been in on this one. It's a very depressing event if the gfs is right. Can't buy a winter airmass when it counts this year

These kinds of years teach us a lot about people

Depends on what you're into... Every car from every manufacturer was on the floor(s). Exotics were amazing but not really my thing. Had every classic mustang on display so that was great to walk through. Indoor stunt track rides for my teen son and friends. I looked at 2500 size pickups. My next truck is either a Ram 2500 Cummins diesel or GMC 2500 with the Duramax diesel. Was very very impressed with the GMC. All the big trucks nowadays have luxury interiors and tech. Just need to come up with 70 large... might be a few years... lol

Just got back from the car show in DC. What an amazing event (if you like cars). It was a blast and MUCH more fun than looking at depressing models. Back to being depressed in a couple house I suppose