psuhoffman

@WesternFringe There is 0 chance that 15" report is accurate, for all the reasons you eloquently laid out in a logical rational scientific way. There is also a 0% change that stormy will accept any of those rational logical arguments.

Our temperatures do spike, but that's because the boundary temps are easily warmed in late February and early March by the increased solar input, but this is not necessarily impacting the wet bulb temperature significantly and that is what matters to our snow chances. I think the fact that it feels warmer, and that any snow we do get will melt real quick, gives the false impression that our chances of snow are going down more than they actually are in late Feb and early March.

Our chances of a warning level snowfall event in Baltimore on any given day don't really degrade much until you hit about March 10th when they drop off a cliff quick.

I don't know how to answer this in a simple way so bear with me. The A/B thing is overly simplistic and becomes complicated when you apply the more messy but real parameters of storms. Originally Miller only had his two A/B types but they have since added a ton more to try to resolve the complexity. Originally type A was a gulf wave that rode up the east coast without any transfer. B was a west to east system that jumped to the coast and redeveloped. However, this gets messy because most gulf waves that impact up here start out with a low up west of the apps and then redevelops to the east. Is this A/B? Frankly all storms "jump". Storms don't move. The low pressure continually reforms along the path of best height falls. We say convective feedback error all the time, but convection actually can "pull" a low off its path for a short time due to the meso height falls created. So yes some storms have a more continual path than others but they all jump to some degree, making these classifications overly simplistic. Then you get into phasing. Was it a pure STJ wave moving west to east that simply jumped to the coast or was there some weaker wave that phased with a northern stream SW? How does that impact the definition? What is important to the DC/Baltimore area is not so much "did the storm redevelop or jump" but where the jump happens and how mature the system is and its moisture source. The problem here is the main energy for the storm was a northern stream wave diving southeast that bombed and phased with a very very very weak pacific wave that split off and ejected from the retrograding trough out west. There was not a good moisture feed with the original pacific mid latitude wave and so the system had very little going on until it was captured and phased with the more energetic northern stream system diving in. This is not ideal for our area. Forget the A/B thing, what we need is a healthier wave with better moisture source coming at us from the west that jumps to the coast south of our latitude. Feb 2003. Feb 9 2010. We can do just fine with a transfer system if the wave has a good moisture source and is developing before it gets to our longitude/latitude. We will not if we are waiting on some northern stream wave to bomb out and capture and explode a weak wave just as it gets to us. That almost never works here. There was one in Feb 1996 that worked out...but that's about it. I can't think of any other examples where we had some NS system diving in from the NW waiting to bomb a virtually non existent wave just off our coast and we got into the CCB associated flush hit zone. It always ends up being NJ northeast thing. I called this a miller b because of the transfer and the fact the primary energy was that NS wave. It definitely was not a miller A and honestly I have not kept up with all the various additional definitions they've since added to try to better resolve this debate and I don't care to because it's silly. All storms jump. Ones that have to cross the mountains just have a more pronounced jump because they jump to where the coastal front is located. But some people have the wrong idea that the screw zone is because of this jump. It's because the storm went north of them. The mountains cause the screw zone because of the west wind creates downsloping to the south of the storm track. The appearance of the jump screwzone is more a function of the impact of the mountains. IF the track is south of your location you will usually do fine. But if it is north...yes a west wind once the low gets east of you will cut off the precip, but if the storm had not jumped and kept moving in that trajectory it would have been rain anyways, the mountains and the CAD associated is the only thing that saves places east of there in cases with a west track system...so you can't cherry pick one and ignore the other impact of those mountains. A storm tracking through the midwest going north of Winchester would have screwed them over regardless of a jump. The track is what's more important. Get that low into KY and jump it to off the VA capes and Winchester can do just fine. It tracks into OH/WV and jumps to off MD or north and...yea no good. Sorry I know this was more complicated than you wanted but it's not nearly as simple as the typical A/B debate makes it.

because its a weak POS wave...who cares if we miss 2" of snow! Had the wave been more amplified it would have hit us. If it is that weak I don't even care.

The IVT and the FGEN kind of overlapped for a time. There was definitely an impact because if you look at the obs there is a zone of 6-7" reports in a an area that lines up with about where the IVT was surrounded by generally 2-4" outside that area (except for up here with got to 5-6" purely from the Parrs Ridge effect) then totals went up again once to the eastern part of MD closer to the developing coastal. Some of the guidance over did it, I don't think the 2"/hr rates some guidance had ever developed, maybe because for a time the IVT was actually split into multiple bands instead of one consolidated one.

perfect timing for my spring skiing up in New England A month of 50 degree skiing in suncreen, T shirts and wacky outfits

Not sure this is the right thread but... something to keep in mind for future miller b storms, almost every single one going back to the 80s, tends to trend west up until about 24-36 hours out, and then shifts east and pulls the rug out at the last minute to some extent. Some didn't do it to us...like Jan 2015 which did that rug pull to NYC, or Feb 89 that rug pulled me in NJ, but they all do it. Some recent examples for our area are Dec 2000, Boxing day, March 8, 2018, Feb 1 2021, and this week. Where around 24-48 hours out things were trending west and we got excited and then at the very end reality set in and the storm ended up just a little northeast. That is the MO. That happens ALWAYS every single time. Expect it. It just is how the models are with these miller b storms. I don't know why. I have just observed they tend to be under amplified and too far east around days 4-7 then over correct and get us excited around day 2-3 and then shift back at the last minute and everything shifts 50-75 miles east the final 24 hours. That doesn't mean we can't EVERY get a lot of snow from a miller B, but it's super rare and we want it amplifying well west not relying on getting the very back edge of the developing CCB zone because that will almost always end up further east than guidance shows 2-3 days out.

Every coop around you reported 6-8". Some parts of the DC metro got 5-7" of snow. Did EVERYONE win no. But stop it.

can't tell that. I can see the AIGFS MSLP and surface and 850 temps. But we know there is almost always a layer slightly warmer than 850 so towards the end of the second wave the 850's get close enough that there is probably a warm layer somewhere and DC mixes but 90% of the precip is over by then, it's not like Jan 25.

it's a two wave system, wave 1 is definitely all snow for DC. Wave 2 night end as some mixed precip DC south but overall 90% of the precip is snow in DC on the AIGFS imo

I have never had much interest in the thing later this week. I just don't see the win there...the flow is compressed and deamplifying with not enough ambient cold ahead of the wave...so in order to get enough precip we need a wave to amplify more to our west...but that would also mean warmer...it would take such a perfect thread the needle... But this wave next week I like. As much as I can like something at that range in a flawed but not horrible pattern anyways. Across most guidance it's been a little north but at day 5+ that's actually been where every eventual snow event was at that range...trend has been south from a week out...then back north some at the very end. The pattern looks meh on the means but if you dig in the TPV is displaced into a location that's worked late in the season before. It has some similarities to some of our late Feb early March snows of the past.

Don't get me wrong the pattern was perfect. We timed up an extremely perfect AO/NAO with a moderate basin wide Nino which is our perfect STJ configuration for elevated chances at HECS level storms. That right there is the prerequisite we needed to even have a chance at that. But then it also took good luck yes. Put it this way...the pattern was so good that it produced 5 HECS level events somewhere in the east that winter. That was the pattern not luck. BUT...Baltimore got flush hit by 3 of the 5 and a pretty good SECS level snowfall from 1 of the other 2. Out of the 5 huge snowstorms that affect the east coast that winter only 1 missed Baltimore and 3 were flush hit bullseyes! That is good luck. That is us scoring way above our average hit rate. With bad luck maybe we only get 1 of those to hit... average luck maybe 2, getting 3 flush hits was very good luck on top of the perfect pattern. We also got flush hit with some weaker waves, a clipper that put down 2-3" and that little thing in early Feb that gave us 3-6". Perfect pattern plus good luck and...most snow ever.

I'll take 103" of snow and I DGAF how warm it is.

In terms of snowfall, it was Baltimore's snowiest winter out of about 150 years of records. That alone is a significant data point. Is it possible to get more snow, sure. But that was an anomaly greater than 1 in 150, we don't know how much greater since we don't have more records than that.... so while possible it would take a crazy ridiculous amount of good luck and everything going absolutely perfectly. We have had other winters with a mean pattern almost exactly like 2010 and they didn't end up with that much snow. They were snowy but that took a lot of good luck on top of having a good pattern.