psuhoffman

Some Nina’s overproduce. 1999-2000 for instance had no business being an above normal snowfall winter given the predominant long wave pattern. We just got lucky. So conversely when that season is in an analog set I warn people a repeat of that pattern could easily result in a single digit or worse snowfall season.

That’s another year that underproduced. I am not saying it should have been a blockbuster like it was to our north. We will always struggle and be on the southern or western fringe of a lot of storms in a Nina. But the fact they all totally skunked DC/Baltimore was somewhat bad luck. I think if you repeat that seasons pattern it’s another with a 75% chance we would do better. Again not like 30”+ better but I bet that kind of pattern yields a near median snowfall outcome more often then what happened that season.

He was the leader of that band for sure but it wasn’t just him.

Remember in 2009-10 we had a hecs in December and a 1-3” snow in early January and by Jan 20 some were complaining the winter was becoming a letdown.

I agree to a point...but there have been several winters where my best snowstorm happened before December 15 and so I will take what I can get...but you're right when we time up great patterns outside mid winter...that's not good for maximizing potential...but since we don't have any control over that I'll just take whatever comes. If my memory serves, and if you are talking about that same early April storm I am... it was a problem with the energy trade off and cold air press related to the wave in front. From 5 days out that lead wave was weaker and supposed to be a small snow threat for Maryland. At one point I was even on the northern edge of a 2-4" snowfall projection from that little west to east boundary wave. But as that lead wave trended more amplified it pushed it north...but also had the corresponding effect of suppressing the wave behind it. Less energy left over, but more importantly an even greater cold air press, which crazy to say for April, was not what we needed. In the end the lead wave amplified too much and squashed the wave behind it south of us. I remember having this discussion with people that week...they were confused how a wave could be suppressed when temperatures weren't actually THAT cold and it was April. But suppression is more about the flow than the temperatures. And having high temps in the upper 40s when its sunny in April actually is VERY COLD...and indicates how dry and suppressive the flow is. Plus...had it been precipitating it would have been plenty cold enough to snow.

There were 3 dominant patterns that winter. The first 1/3 of the snow season was cold but typical Nina on that without a strong STJ and not a lot of Atlantic help big snow was hard to come by. The coast got clipped by an offshore bomb and we got a couple minor events back here. It could have been better though. I doubt much worse. the Mid Jan to late Feb pattern was bad. But it wasn’t as bad as we can get in a Nina. The poleward pac ridge extending into the AO domain provided some opportunities. Duel waves can work when cold presses. We had 2 legit threats. One fell apart and the other under produced. I got 3” from the one wave. But it could have been better if it was more organized or timed better. But it wasn’t a total shutout type pattern. More typical Nina bad. then of course March was unreal. We just missed 2 storms before the March 20 one hit. Then we missed another legit window in early April. Yea I know April but one wave gave southern PA 8” (I had about 2 here) and it’s not like those were areas that have a significantly better April snow climo the wave just went 50 miles north. Then the next wave got suppressed! We actually would have snowed had it now been squashed! Overall if we had those same 3 patterns repeat I’d put a 75% probability we get more snow than we did in 2018.

I think the analog years were for the December’s which would have made that the 2017-18 winter

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.

The upper level low to the NW of the STJ wave acted as a suppressive feature instead of phasing in any way. The upper low acted more like a TPV instead of a typical upper low in the end. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made the week leading up to that, "as the upper levels trended better the surface was worse" I kept saying, but I was not correctly seeing, and I think @Bob Chill was the first to identify, the upper low was actually the problem not a solution. Typically an upper low tracking just to our NW would indicate a surface track maybe even too far NW for what we want, not suppressed, but not if that upper low acts like a polar vortex, and squashes everything around it instead of interacting with it. If you are asking why it did that though I don't know. But there must be something about a Nina though because there are a lot of examples of storms that hit that area (immediate coast from NC/VA Beach up the Delmarva) in Nina's. My best guess is it's a matter of the energy balance between the northern stream and the southern stream. You have a strong enough STJ wave and it can bully its way without much NS help. You get a balance between the two and you can get a phased event where the NS phases with a STJ wave and get a storm that way. But if the balance of energy is too skewed towards the NS, it acts as a suppressive force and squashes everything. This is our biggest issue with Ninas. We are too far south to typically get a lot of snow from NS dominant waves. We can get some, a clipper, a NS wave that tracks further south than usual, but they aren't going to be huge snowstorms here, they can amplify along the east coast and get places further to our north with a bigger event...but were too far southwest typically to get a big storm that way. And if the NS acts as a suppressive force we end up too far north for the weaker STJ waves you get in a nina. So we end up in between. That is why the mean snow minimum for ninas is centered right over us. The odds of an above average snowfall season go up to our north and south.

Yup… The north pacific just never coupled with the enso. Then we got lucky with the Atlantic also. It’s happened recently in ninos also where the pacific pattern never took on a canonical Nino configuration. It was just a fluke. A Nina that didn’t act like a Nina. It happens but it’s not something I’d ever expect again. If it does happen again great but I’d never predict it before hand.

A warmer enso actually correlates slightly warmer for us, but what makes a warm enso "snowier" is that it gives us multiple ways to "win". We can still get a colder pattern sometimes in warm enso...and then it's a possible 2003, 2010 type thing. Those are the once in a blue moon blockbuster winters. But even in a warmer year we can still "win" if we just time up one of those STJ storms with a rare colder period. 1983 and 2016 for example. And of course we get lots of years somewhere in between...but with an active STJ we just have more chances to get snow, even if overall the winter isn't cold...we just have to time up a couple of the storms. The problem with a fading nina is that we don't get the advantage that actually makes warmer enso better...the stronger STJ, which typically doesn't take effect until we get an actual warm enso. So I dont think there is really an advantage to a fading cold enso for our snowfall. That said, I do think a fluke can always happen. Something like 2014 for example, which was a wall to wall enso neutral year, could happen but it's just so rare it likely wouldn't show up in such a small sample just by random probabilities. If we had records that went back longer we probably would eventually see a snowy winter in a cold enso fading to neutral, IMO. But I think we can say it's not MORE likely that if the enso simply stays cold since we do have some examples of a snowy winter in a wall to wall cold enso winter...and absolutely NONE in a cold enso fading to neutral. Again, due to small sample I think that is somewhat a fluke, so saying it is WORSE is a step to far imo, but saying it is better also has no support.