psuhoffman

I got at least 3+ qpf. My pond was really low and now its overflowing.

That was my last winter there and the only good one I experienced. I remember the Halloween snow.

Just a reminder, because apparently some people need to know this....thermometers are not subjective.

I generally agree but you are mentioning one of the closest analog periods to the last 10 years in terms of the longwave pacific and atlantic patterns. Actually the pattern if you just look at the h5 means for the early to mid 1970s was even worse! And if you look at the numbers you'll see we have done about 15% WORSE now wrt snowfall. This trend is evident in high snowfall periods also, the last favorable period was slightly less favorable then previous ones. So our current crappy pattern cycle is the bigger issue...but mixed within that is the fact that the background state for snow is degrading also.

The mountains just to our west did significantly better that winter. But there were several storms that were very close if it was just slightly colder. Of course things have warmed even more since then.

@Maestrobjwa keep in mind for a pattern to be valid you have to be able to explain WHY the pattern is happening. Otherwise it's likely the pattern is simply random. If you flipped heads 5 times in a row, and the only coin flips you ever saw in your life were those 5, you would deduce that coin flips result in heads if you are simply looking for patters and not factoring in random chance and causality.

2 counter points. 1) a sample size of 5 is way too small to pull a meaningful trend from 2) your sample is arbitrary. What made you include 1973 with a peak ONI of 1.9 and exclude 2024 with a peak ONI of 2.1? If you include 2024 then we are due this year. If you exclude both of those years, or just 1973 which most do not consider a "SUPER" nino, the whole pattern disappears. Either way I think my first point is the valid one...it's too small a sample size to try to find patterns like that. Most of your patterns are simply artifacts of random chaos in a stochastic system.

3 ninos is 3 ninos. You're digging too deep trying to find a silver lining. But lets wait until we actually fail before we start this analysis. I think we have a 40-50% chance of a big snowstorm this winter. Let's hope luck is on our side. But 2 things to keep in mind. The nino is 2016 warmed the pacific and super charged what was already a bad trend. And we've been in a very hostile pacific pattern ever since. Similar past periods with a similarly hostile long term cycle were low snowfall also, but things are getting worse so a bad cycle now is REALLY REALLY REALLY bad. It's that simple...the pattern we've been in the last 10 years would have been a bad snowfall period in any era, but now with warming bad is super awful bad. That's it... it's pretty simple.

At some point we will get a big snowstorm again. I am not saying it will never snow again. However, we are in a hostile PDO cycle. You can track these long term cycles and see the impact on our snowfall. The issue is the hostile periods are becoming MORE hostile. It's becoming VERY difficult to get big snowfall years during hostile cycles. It was never easy during hostile pacific cycles but now its becoming increasingly unlikely to even luck into some fluke snowy seasons during a hostile period. Eventually we will... I don't think it's impossible just less and less likely. And eventually the PDO will flip again and we will have a more favorable cycle and probably a period of 15-20 years with "more" snowfall but the last 2 favorable cycles showed a decrease from period "snowy" cycles also so don't expect another 1960's or even another 2000-2016 period. But we will see snowier periods than what we've just experienced again. But my point is using past "normal" trends to set expectations is flawed since we know things are changing and becoming more hostile.

It is true that 6 of the last 7 HECS storms came in a nino but those are such super rare events anyways. We've had plenty of SECS/MECS events in other enso states, at least until recently. Recently we've not had big snowtorms in ANY enso state. The last 2 Nino's didn't produce a significant snow for Baltimore either. If this winter does not that would be 3 in a row. At some point maybe you just have to accept a difficult truth.

BWI's average high on Xmas since 2015 is 52. December has been the month impacted the most by warming. The fact that SST's have warmed impacts the start of winter due to lag in water temps cooling. This has been documented...someone published monthly snowfall changes over the last 50 years and our area was the worst shade for December. January to March has been less impacted. Most of our decrease in snowfall climo has come from losing early in the season. It is what it is.

Who is saying it will be? Most I see are saying it's likely to be warm and wet but at least we have a chance to score one huge snowstorm if we get lucky and time up one of the storms with cold...which is what all the east based strong nino's indicate is our fate.

I have a season pass to Snowshoe!!!

As long as it kills us with massive blizzards

Fringed