psuhoffman

The "flavor" of 2017-18 was probably about as good as we could hope for this winter, the Baltimore area was the local screw zone snow minimum in general but it featured two legitimate cold/snowy periods and even with both failing to fully reach potation around here even the minimum areas got close to a median snowfall that winter. If we repeated that general pattern with truly cold period from mid December to mid January and then crazy blocking the whole month of March...plus there were a couple lead/trailing wave opportunities in February and one produced a minor snowfall... so even the in between period wasn't a total hopeless period... considering there are some total snowless duds in the analog set I would sign up for a repeat of that winter and say please and thank you.

I’d be more concerned about why I’m suddenly a farmer in the 1800s than the winter.

If nothing changes I might just post this link with “what he said” for my winter outlook

@CAPE @Bob Chill I’m a believer in the WDI but the problem is what’s going on behind this. What we’re due for is to get out of this PDO cycle. I don’t mean the general -PDO but the mini super negative PDO phase we’ve been in since 2019 where it’s basically oscillating between -1.5 and -4 the whole damn time! Which is to say it’s been some version of “just plain bad to OMG what did I do wrong in a past life” territory for 6 years now! The WDI is for that ish to end! Past PDO mini negative cycles like this didn’t go past 5-6 years. But so long as we are in this the odds of a big snowstorm remain very low. We didn’t have many at all during past similar PDO periods. The thing is we won’t know it’s over until it is. But I don’t necessarily think the latest relaxation of what was a record low PDO in August is necessarily proof it’s over. So far we’re just seeing a typical relaxation in the cycle. If by January or February we get a PDO near neutral then I think it’s time to consider we’ve finally broken out of it. All that said, once we break out I think we will get a region wide snow. Hopefully soon! But so long as we remain in this recent very negative PDO mini phase it’s just unlikely.

No lies were told. I wonder how much of the ~18% of our snow climo we’ve lost is due to the fact our pre new years snowfall has fallen off a cliff.

The issue I have is once you start layering too many factors and being super specific for each (weak cold enso, PDO, AMO, QBO) you end up with such a small subset that it’s hard to say for sure the results are significant. Or maybe the better way to say it is it’s difficult to know what the chances of a “fluke” outcome are because that’s really what we’re hunting for. The truth is outside of Nino, all other winters the odds greatly favor a lower snowfall season. The vast majority of our good to great snow seasons fall under that category (1978, 1983, 1987, 1988, 2003,2005, 2010, 2015, 2016) with some chance we get a fluke cold/snowy year like 1979, 1982, 1996, 2014 in all “other” winters. And a slightly greater but still low chance we get a “decent” snowy or cold year like 1990, 1994, 2000, 2004 or 2006. But those are all kind of flukes. 70% of all non Nino winters end up pretty bad. And if you parse the analogs with so many variables to the point you only have 3-4 seasons in the list, you often end up not being able to tell what the odds of that fluke type season happening are because a sample that small might miss that fluke event unless you go back 100 years but then you’re using data on some of those variables that are less reliable. Just throwing my stream of consciousness out there. I do this too. Not sure how to account for it.

It’s way too early to pop any champagne but it looks promising at least.

Looping back to the discussion a few posts back, as we head into November we do want a colder pattern. We’ve had 11 seasons since 2000 when we went into fall with a somewhat similar enso to now and the winter ended up cold neutral or weak Nina. So somewhere within that group is our best enso analogs. Only one of the 11 was a truly great snowfall winter, 2013-14 but it was the coldest November of the 11! 2 others were decent snow seasons, above median at least across the area, and they were the 2’nd and 4th coldest! 3 of the 4 warmest November’s were total dreg dud almost no snow at all seasons and the 4th was pretty bad also. so if we get a torch November our sensible analogs become torch snowless winters! If we get a colder November the analogs become a near average to maybe even a show at a snowy winter. Something in between produces a mean of about 11” at BWI so bad but not god awful. All that to say if that pattern were to be the predominant one for November it projects well for the season. Im trying to provide some hope, there is plenty of doom and gloom to grab onto if that’s your thing.

the 11 best enso analogs (we won’t know which actually end up the best for another month or two) since 2000 are the Novembers of 2000, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2024 There does seem to be some correlation between a colder November and a better chance at snow those winters. These are stats for BWI. The 4 warmest November’s were 2001, 2011, 2022 and 2024 and those years went on to average 3.9” of snow. The 4 Coldest were 2000, 2013, 2017, 2021 and they went on to average 19.4” Now let’s assume 2013-14 was a fluke outlier (which I do) even if we remove it and replace it with the next coldest year 2005-6 the mean is 14.5” which is close to a median winter at BWI and significantly better than 3.9” So it does seem colder November=better

That event could have hit further north, but then it would have ripped off the places that got hit. It was typical of cold enso waves in that it had a more restrictive cold sector precip expanse. We just don’t get those HUGE whole region win type storms in a cold enso which is part of the issue.

I don’t think it’s bad luck. It’s tempting to say that when an individual storm misses by just a few miles…but when that exact thing happens a majority of the time in cold enso seasons I think it’s actually a part of the pattern. I think there is enough data to say definitely the further east you go in our region the better your odds are of having a better snow season WRT climo during a Nina. I think it’s two factors which account for that. Some Nina’s are actually cold or at least feature cold periods. But they are still dry with a weak or absent STJ. If it’s cold/dry that advantages further southeast where it takes less snow to have a “good” year wrt climo. If you luck your way into couple storms and end up with 18” that’s a decent year on the eastern shore. That same result is “not good”for places like Leesburg or Winchester and “god awful what have I done wrong with my life” for up here. The other thing is the combination of a weaker STJ and faster NS means the storms we do get are likely to favor places further east as they are rarely going to be healthy gulf waves approaching from the TN valley. They are often weak waves that need to develop as they phase with the NS later and usually that favors farther northeast. They can clip our eastern zones near the coast as they develop before destroying NJ and NYC. But they typically leave my area smoking citrus. It’s easy to think it’s bad luck when you miss a storm that close but when it happens enough times I don’t think it’s luck. Im not complaining. There are plenty of years that make up for it. My snowfall is astronomically better in other types of winters. But cold enso is not it. It’s just sucked for places NW of 95 that’s we’ve been stuck in an extremely hostile PDO recently which basically makes the constant base state pattern Nina ish. It will change eventually and places NW will cash in again.

Frankly until the PDO becomes less hostile (I don’t necessarily mean we go into a truly favorable PDO just that we get out of this run of near record hostility within the longer term PDO cycle) I don’t think the enso state means all that much. Out goalposts (outside the coastal areas where one or two 6” storms makes or breaks it) is likely between a total dead ratter and a median/80% of mean type winter. Of course the problem with persistence as the basis for a forecast is the pattern can flip and you don’t always know ahead of time when that will be. That said if we get to December without any sign the PDO is going through a significant phase alteration our fate is probably locked in.

Good point. Both the observation and whether it even matters. 6/7 of the wall to wall cold season enso neutral years the last 30 years were below avg snowfall at BWI. The numbers suggest our chances of a snowy winter don’t change much between a weak Nina and enso neutral. Actually what’s happened to enso neutral winters accounts for most of the degradation of our snow climo. Our typical snowfall during enso neutral has degraded worse than any other subset to the point there isn’t much difference between Nina and neutral now. To really simplify it we have about a 60% chance of a snowy winter in a Nino and a 20% chance in all other winters. Overall in any given year we only have about a 30% chance of a snowy winter. Our climo has become an occasional fluke snowy winter or two surrounded by many many years of dreg. That trend started well before this current string of futility.

At least we finally got rid of Franklin. I was rooting for them to lose so this would happen. I stopped even rooting for them recently. I can't waste my time supporting something doomed to fail in the end. And I couldn't stomach the weak pathetic loser alumni attitude anymore, where they were content and happy just to go 10-3 every season and enjoy some trip to the "Who gives a flying F bowl" each year. PSU doesn't have the recruiting classes of Alabama, Georgia or Ohio State, no one should expect them to be competing for a national championship every season like those programs do. But I compare it to Auburn and LSU, two programs who do have similar recruiting rankings as PSU, who have won championships in the last 20 years. They both also have more losing seasons that PSU under Franklin, but who cares. No one remembers that LSU sucked the year after their last championship, no one cares. There is one winner and everyone else is some degree of loser. This just have a winning season loser BS is sickening and I couldn't stand it. I hope now they get a coach that gives them a chance to upset some of the big schools and have at least a prayer of winning a title one year. Yes, playing a more aggressive style can also lead to losses and ads more variance but I was not content to just beat up on the pathetic schools on our schedule every year and lose every time we play a top 10 team.

As an outsider who follows the Raves but with no rooting interest one way or another I rate the coaching in between most others. I was never as high on it a few years ago when almost everyone considered the Ravens staff one of the very best in the NFL, and I am not as down on it now. The team is devastated by injuries in key spots. I'm not sure anyone could overcome that, especially in a league that features as much parity as the NFL does, when a few key players separate the best and worst teams. Look at the Eagles...they got hit by some injuries to weak spots in their roster and they suddenly look like crap the last couple of weeks. Take away 3 or 4 key players and they aren't nearly as good a team anymore. The Ravens have been hit even worse! My opinion of the inability of the team to win a super bowl with their recent stacked roster is its 90% on the QB. Lamar has been perhaps the best regular season QB in NFL history. But his playoff performance has been below average. Last year he was better, but before last year his playoff QB rating was BELOW 80!!! You can't win with that. That is below even a "game manager" QB level of competency. One season he was injured in the playoffs and that had nothing to do with him. And last year he was better and perhaps in another parrallell reality they do win the SB last year...but the receiver drops that easy catch at the end...and who knows. He played well enough to win and that one time someone else let him down...and maybe the Ravens don't have the same mental block the Bills do against KC and they don't fail to convert a 3rd or 4th and 1 like 27 times and they win the AFC championship last year. Dunno about beating the Eagles...they were a freaking freight train at the end of last season...but who knows. But that was one game...if Lamar played like he does in the regular season in the playoffs across the board the last 7 years...they probably would have won a super bowl and that has nothing to do with coaching.