psuhoffman

we had a blizzard what would have been presidents weekend 1958 but the holiday was still called Washington’s Birthday then.

If you think the lack of a blockbuster rare huge snowstorm Feb 20-28 is not just the product of a random chance distribution of a rare event over a limited sample then explain the causation. Finding some pattern in numbers means absolutely nothing if you can’t show there is causality and it’s not just an artifact or randomness.

Persistence works more than 50% but it’s not enough to just rely on it. just off my head these winters featured significant pattern shifts and storm track changes 1993, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2022

Where the warmest anomalies are changes exactly how the pattern sets up. A more west based Nino places the tropical forcing closer to the dateline which is where we want it. That tends to correlate with a trough southwest of Alaska...the downstream impacts of which are good for us. An east based nino shifts the whole pattern further east and often we see the north pacific trough end up too close to the Pacific NW which floods the CONUS with pac puke. We need that to be pulled back some.

Sometimes a QPF pattern persists all season...sometimes not. Remember 2015, Everyone thought we were toast when all those snows hit north of us through January and early Feb...then it became our turn from Feb 15 into March. That was maybe the most extreme example but it's hit or miss whether the a pattern persists the whole cold season...the problem with using persistence is it works until it doesn't and it's hard to predict when the pattern is going to change until it does.

The latest CANSIPS was indicating a possible modoki nino. That would increase our chances significantly.

It's true that we will lose the deep constant cold and enter a more variable period...but so long as we have blocking in February or March there is the threat of a snowstorm.

can we really call it a jackpot?

The humidity might rise slightly for a time.

Tracking clouds

So much here…We almost get a snowstorm 48 hours after this. On aigfs we do. And it’s the long range gfs.

There are some similarities to 2018 only in this case the TPV was weaker to begin with and the warming is happening about a week earlier. Obviously we will need luck to go our way...but if we got a similar pattern to March 2018 and got it to set in 7-10 days earlier AND with a colder N American profile to start... I would roll the dice with that.

Might take the kids to snowshoe

90% of our winters end in disappointment. March snow has nothing to do with it.

PD is a different date each year. Baltimore had a top 20 snow on Feb 19th. That’s layer than PD 90% of the time. So now we’re just talking 8 days? Yes there hasn’t been a too 20 event from Feb 20-28. But there have been big snows after that. It’s a fluke. If anything it means we’re due to get a storm that week! There are so many weeks without a top 20 snowstorm. They are so rare and some weeks have 3 of them meaning there are many weeks with none. The last week of December. The first week of January. January 9-21 have none! Why don’t you obsess about those? you do this with lots of things. You seem to try to assign meaning to randomness. The fact a super rare event hasn’t happened in the 140 years of records that one week is just a product of random chance. There are several other weeks without a big snow and I promise you if we had records that went back far enough you’d see that storms can happen those weeks and this is just random chance over a limited period of time.

A March 2018 is possible. If we could start the cycle a week earlier and get a little more luck in our area could be good. That month was so so so close to epic and we got about as unlucky as possible to only get one decent snow that month.

3 of Baltimores 17 biggest snowstorms came in March. Baltimore has had snows of 22”, 16” and 13” in March. And 2 years ago I ran the numbers and showed that Baltimores odds of getting a 4”, 8” and 12” Storm peak the first week of February but then only decrease slightly until you get to the 3rd week of March when they drop off a cliff. You say this every year. Every single year. And one proven it’s false like 3 times and you still say it. Why?

You give him an inch…

It’s gonna be the worst inch ever!

I hear you. But the last 2 ninos did you no good. My only point was assuming a Nino fixes this seems flawed. The issue hasn’t been enso.

That would depend on other factors. AO being the most important. Type of Nino. If we get a +AO east based +QBO winter we might be looking at a 1992 1995 type disaster but it’s too soon to know that yet. I’m not predicting doom and gloom. We have Chuck for that. I’m just saying don’t assume the rest of this winter is going to suck and don’t assume next year will be good.

But jokes aside why are you attributing our issues with enso. During the recent snow drought we’ve had 4 Nina’s. 3 neutrals and 2 ninos. And the snow results have been equally atrocious across them all for the most part. Arguably the closest we came to a good winter was 2021 which was a Nina but it was slightly too warm in DC. I got 50” here while 95 was getting 36 degree perfect track rainstorms all winter. But the issue wasn’t dry that winter! I don’t think enso had been our issue. Yes overall ninos are better and give us the best chance of a blockbuster winter. But it’s not as simple as Nino good everything else suck. We can have bad ninos and snowy Nina’s. The record -PDO the last 7 years was the bigger issue not enso.

It wasn’t the best period (unfavorable NAO and PDO combo) but not as bad as recent run! 1988 was solid. 1990 great first 1/3. 1993 and 1994 were really nice winters not far NW of 95. 96 of course then Jan 2000. It wasn’t quite the sustained dreg of the recent stretch. But ya far from glory days.

We are likely to have a +QBO next winter. The better ninos, 1987, 2003, 2010, 2015 were all -QBO. Not every +QBO was bad. We had some decent ones. 1988 and 2016 were ok +QBO ninos. But we’ve not had a blockbuster cold wall to wall +QBO Nino winter

The -AO is going to run the table. This has all the characteristics of a year with a wall to wall -AO. Do we cash in wrt snow…stay tuned but we have the snowier half of snow climo left to go! But of course we will have to listen to the insufferable jack asses who complain that the sun melts snow after Feb 10 so we should just toss the last 40% of our snow climo because it melts faster.