LordBaltimore

you guys are lucky. I've spent the last two days trying to figure out where to put a temperature sensor out in my apartment complex so that it's both valid and not liable to have someone think it's a spycam.

Melting seems to have stopped. Going by official protocol (average depth over exposed areas) snow depth seems to be around 1-1.5 inches. Amazing how long the snowpack has lasted. If this storm verifies for 2-4 along with ensuing cold, then there will have been at least a trace on the ground from the 3rd to the ~26th, or over an inch from the 6th. That's double the climatology for stretches of continuous snowcover in these parts

The fv3 has inherent problems with updrafts because of the d-grid. Not sure how this translates to winter storms but take a look at this: https://epic.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/UIFCW-2023-Tue-4.-Wicker_FV3_UFS_Talk-1.pdf

snowpack in columbia starting to look rough. Guessing that most of the surviving pack by tomorrow morning will be in protected areas. On the bright side, whatever makes it through will be as legitimate of a snowpack as anything in New England, with frozen rainwater adding to liquid water content.

There's been a non-negligible chance of a nuclear war every single year for awhile now. People talk about 2100 but I'd say > 50% we get something black swan like that makes predictions useless

I have a feeling BWI will reach a max of exactly 33.1 F today

DC area down to -11F morning after. This might be the most beautiful model run I've ever seen

Those shrimp trawlers better batten down the hatches

I really, really want the 6 below I was promised by the Canadian

would suggest that there's a bimodal distribution going on with some members popping the SE ridge over us, but with a primary peak (containing the mode AKA the operational) that keeps us in the cold

thanks! As long as roads are passable weekend after MLK day I'd be thrilled out of my mind. Just can't be rooting for a HECS lmao

going off of wundermap seems like dew points were way lower than forecast even if temperatures busted high. End result for was almost definitely better for the snowpack than the alternative

Idk how to explain to my fiance that I both do and do not want our wedding to get snowed out. Only you guys understand the struggle

Spire model is a scam like all other models developed by private weather analytics companies. They don't post anything about its internals online and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's literally just IFS/GFS output that they downscale/postprocess with ml. They even use redflag buzzwords like "deep learning" on their site to let you know they're selling dung

those dendrites Friday night sacrificed themselves to reinforce our snowpack and prevent a torch. Like heroic little paratroopers falling through the virga

As a long term (~30 year out) project I've been thinking how feasible it would be to create a microclimate somewhere in the WV highlands that maximizes yearly snowcover. Imagine buying a couple acre property on a 3000+ft hilltop, then digging out a 30ish ft deep artificial cold sink large enough for a cabin and a modest yard. The pit and surrounding wind breaks would have to be designed in such a way as to minimize turbulent mixing. That would then take care of advective warming, and snowmaking throughout the year would reflect away any insolation. Not sure how to deal with downward long wave yet though. Ultimate goal would be maintaining pack into late june

switched back to diamond dust as the band passed north. Hope we get at least another nice pass

Fat dendrites here, way better ratios than Monday. Starting to fill in the inch or so deep spaces between wind-driven sastrugi near my front door. Deeeeeep winter

Honestly might have been confusing them. They were both great years. Feb 2015 was when I rode my bike over a frozen lake roland in college though. Will never forget

You don't have to go that far back. 2014-2015 was the GOAT. People talk about 09-10 but you can't make up for quality with quantity. 14-15 seemed like whole dmv was transported to new hampshire for two months. Lakes iced over into late march. actual snowpack. If we can get a persistent cold pattern out of the rest of January and into February it would go a long way in proving that 14-15 wasn't just some one off fluke

Sometimes I wonder if I'd be happier or more productive if it snowed less. I'm sitting here looking at 18z temperatures to see how long we have until it melts. It feels like when you have an older pet and you know they only have a little while left

I hope for my sake and the sake of a lot of other weather peeps, that the people in charge don't forget that these things are still dependent on physical modeling systems and will be for a very very long time. It's not "AI magically takes raw data and transforms it into forecasts", it's more like the numerical modeling system does the data assimilation - using an ensemble - and then the analysis is used as input for a ML model trained off of ERA5 (also produced with a numerical modeling system). The quality of AI forecasts directly scales based on the quality of the numerical model.

need to see summit camp once before I die

I don't care how unpopular or stupid taking over Greenland would be. I want cheap visa free flights to an ice cap and I don't care how we go about getting them

I do wonder if the physics tuning is part of the problem. Microphysics is more of an art than a science even now, and things get tuned based on what they're used for. Cold microphysics that does good for stratiform precip in MCS systems might just whiff in these cases.