psuhoffman

Agree. They aren't a useless tool IMO, you can glean some things from them as long as you look under the hood and understand the why behind them But that isn't what most people do, they just look at some 15 day mean and make judgements.

Which means nothing without knowing the specifics. The snow means aren’t useless but the raw numbers and a change like that are. For example did the mean lose an inch from some crazy outlier members on the threats over the next 7 days? Thats pretty meaningless.

This. He is more grounded, for example, on his Facebook page. He lets his tortured snow weenie soul vent here. I think maybe it’s therapy for him. I don’t mind it. Easy enough to ignore when it becomes too much. But I get why some get annoyed.

That’s been my favorite “window” for a while but was trying not to deb on the threats before. Besides it’s too far out to say anything other than I like the general pattern.

Verification proves each run is more likely to be accurate now, however there is more chaos imo. 20 years ago I think I was able to use the models more functionally. They weren’t more likely to be correct but they had more consistent fail patterns you could adjust for. Now they fail in different ways that are impossible to predict run to run.

At a birthday party and then watching eagles game so I can’t look up a ton of stuff but off the top of my head this reminds me of a storm in January 2001. That one worked out. IIRC it was about 3-4” around DC and northern VA and 4-8” across much of Maryland. And if my memory serves very similar. It was around Jan 20 2001 I think.

Yes but that system had an STJ wave associated with it. That was a miller a/b hybrid. It definitely phased late. So similar but not a pure NS miller b like this. These are even more precarious for us.

The best sign is someone said JB thinks it’s going to be warm.

It’s hard to see that clearly because this bigger amplification is in front of it and will impact the flow behind it. But that wave is a more normal way for us to get a snowstorm. Nothing in this type pattern is likely a super long track thing. Models just aren’t resolving these waves at range in this noisy flow with phasing involved. But that one is feel more comfortable if it looked good across guidance at say 48 or 72 hours. This first one I won’t feel good until I see the death band over me! I am also not sold this is over after the 20th. The day 15 across guidance doesn’t look bad to me. -AO, trough near Hawaii. PNA going positive again. Frankly it looks like the day 5-10 looked when it was at day 15. Im pretty sure it’s going to snow this month. In just warning against trying to identify the exact threat at range in this pattern. It’s likely we won’t know until inside 2-3 days when we do finally get a hit.

I’m feeling optimistic still in general. Just saying I’m not putting any emotional investment on this one particular threat. Been burned way too many times by these type things. I’ll get excited when I see the flakes falling with these miller b NS phase setups.

Honestly this isn’t the kind of setup that gets resolved until inside 72 hours. Maybe 48. And honestly this exact type setup when we’re waiting on a surface redevelopment associated with NS phasing and an amplifying upper low…is some of our biggest last minute busts. A recent example was March 8 2018. Expecting 4-8” across Maryland 12 hours out and the whole thing developed late and totally missed us. And I could rattle off more examples both good and bad. Similar one in 1996 and the other way. We went to bed expecting nothing and a NJ northeast storm and we got 6-10”. This is not a long track type thing. Even if it looked great at 48 hours I’d be hella nervous. Just warning y’all in case we get some kind of consensus in the next day or two…I still wouldn’t feel great. These type setups historically have given the models fits right up until game time. And unfortunately the typical error is for things to get going slower and shift northeast at the end. Not always. I have an example that developed southwest of guidance but it was 30 years ago!

We haven’t had any HECS level events from this type of progression. Not impossible. I’m sure given enough time it will happen. But a more modest snow event is a more likely outcome if we get snow at all. We’ve had plenty of secs and some MECS level events from this type of setup. The total fail scenario is of wave 1 amplifies a lot but misses us, most likely would be a late development or north like euro but that prevents wave 2 from having room to amplify. If wave 1 goes nuts we need a hit.

Most of that was from threats inside day 7. You won’t see a mean like that from a pattern that’s mostly day 7+

As long as the AO remains negative and the pacific ridge remains displaced north (no crazy ridge just north of Hawaii) we will continue to have chances and I see no signs of either of those things flipping yet

your post was better, keep it up