Bob Chill

Haven't seen many good h5 setups lately. This is a really good one. Keep em coming

Scratch my last post. All in 18z gfs.

Been busy AF last few days and haven't really looked at anything in detail. @psuhoffman covered everything but I wanted to post something about the d10 window. Seems crazy that odds favor rain but they do for now so it is what it is. The 12z EPS qpf and snow meteos show just how low our odds are for now. This can change in a blink as it's far out there in time. Some of the rain solutions are surely ice but snowfall is meager considering near unanimous support for precip. QPF Snowfall This comparison will be something I'm watching closely this week. Especially after the 18z gfs showed a path to victory

You're exactly right. This weekend was a "surprise" chance at something. It was never a classic or good track. Just one of the ways we do flawed around here pretty regularly. The potentially longer window starts after this weekend and that has been the case since we caught wind of a change for the better. Expectations go through the roof the second an op shows a good snow event 5-10 days away.

No biggie. Euro weeklies are cold to very cold in early Feb and AN qpf. We should be over climo by Valentine's day

Find me a better D15+ fantasy op run... lol. Wow

That's the point I was trying to make. This isn't a Feb 10 or Jan 16 look where you just drool over the mean pattern and it's a matter of time before a miller A hits you. We could fail next weekend and blank out the next week and STILL be staring at multiple chances in the near future. That's a very good place to be. I hate discrete windows where if you miss out it could be days/weeks/months before another chance rolls along. The upcoming period looks far better than that.

@Ji Here's our long track coastal

You rarely see mean 850 anoms this cold d15 on the EPS. Very impressive panel from far out in time. Temps could be very friendly after this reshuffle settles down.

This is not a dream period imo. Storms will not come easy nor easily be all snow. It's a good pattern during primetime but it's several levels below a really good winter wx pattern.

EPS is pretty weak for the d10 deal. Majority of solutions that have a storm are too far east. There's a couple good hits but small minority. Safe to say there is little to no ens support for a blocked coastal.

The wobbles have commenced. Euro broke the trend so we probably know less than we did 30 minutes ago. lol

Like I've said before. Looks like a bread and butter west track/eroding CAD situation. Odds favor some frozen precip. Whether or not it's a memorable or "good" event will depend on how much QPF hits while the column works. Euro is stepping back but it's going to wobble around every 12 hours for a few days. We'll know by Wed if it's going to be a decent snow event or a quick small hit that gets washed away.

Yea, that and the track is a little further north than 0z so could cancel out improvements with the antecedent airmass

Euro ticking colder/stronger with the high leading into the 18th. Very noticeable by hr96. Should be a decent run (famous last words)

@psuhoffman Good analysis on the next window. I do find it comforting that even if that window sucks.... ens guidance looks sweet AF down the line. This is a cold/stormy/active look. Progressive flow but great height pattern in the atlantic to fight off cutters. Of course anytime the NAO is + a cutter can happen but if we aren't going to have a block I'll be perfectly happy with this look through mid March.

What a weenie run... lol

Looks good to me and room to improve...

All ops are converging on a colder start to the storm next weekend. The 0z EPS ticked up quite a bit with # of solutions that have snowfall in SW VA. Now the ops are agreeing with that. We're getting close to locking in some sort of winter wx event now. By this time tomorrow if everything holds or improves it's probably game on here. Warm fronts can be modeled decent 3-4 days in advance so these op runs are at least believable.

That "weird brief warmup" that the gfs op keeps showing is actually supported by the ens now. EPS really picked up on it on the 0z run. Makes sense as the pattern change is a step down process and not like Feb 2015 where winter blew in violently with a single front. Our change to better conditions this time looks more like a multi step process.

I'm not even sure this is an ice sounding. That's not much of a warm nose at all honestly...

This is slowly morphing into a bread and butter west track with 2-6" of snow before ice/dryslot. It's looked like that general setup since d10. Nice to see us better off today than the past couple.

Notable overnight shift with deeper CAD leading in and not just the surface. Always a good sign with a west track when ROA gets snow from a warm front.

diggin these incremental shifts with better confluence/less latitude gain. ICON continues @ 12z.

My guess is if the warm front hits us it will be mostly or all frozen before dry slot and rain. That's our typical climo for this general setup. How much qpf falls is a question. These parts of a storm generally don't drop more than .5 qpf when the low tracks so far west. The juicy cad tracks are up the apps. This one is almost certainly tracking further west than that.