psuhoffman

For the love of GOD....call JB and DO NOT LET HIM UNCANCEL WINTER!!!! Tie him up or smash his computer if you have too...but please god don't let him uncancel it.

Agreed...I actually think the 0z the weeklies was based on was slightly worse than 12z yesterday. Maybe not in terms of our region specifically but the 12z had slightly more ridging over the top and that is EVERYTHING here. If there is just enough poleward ridging to suppress the trough as it moves east some the pattern can work. But if the NAO and AO go hard core positive and everything consolidates into the TPV up over the pole...its game set match for winter here. That one feature is the whole game wrt where this goes after next week. So while 12z yesterday was crap...it was a slight move away from the total cliff the 0z the night before was. We saw how that run ended on the weeklies lol. That run was good for causing some mass weenie suicides though! At least we got some fun out of it.

That is a CLASSIC CAD signature on the snowfall mean right there.

@C.A.P.E. perhaps our shared "vision" of long range doom can be put on hold right now. Not saying we have to call it off completely...but there are some positive signs right now. The last 24 hours there have been some pretty drastic changes and they start around day 8 honestly. There has been a trend towards more high latitude ridging in that period. It faded on the EPS and carried through on the GEFS but either way that trend in day 8-10 could be significant. Could...maybe...guidance be starting to pick up on this? But there is a definite move towards shifting the cold east and not just way out at day 15 anymore. The SE ridge gets flattened and towards the end the GEFS today shifts the TPV down into northern Quebec. The NAO is only slightly negative but if we get a TPV displacement into Quebec we don't need some super NAO block...that is one of the "other" ways to get it done here. Way too far out given the issues with long range this year, but the extreme changes suddenly in some core features long range to me says the guidance could be in flux and just starting to pick up on the changing pacific tropical forcing.

the EPS snowfall doesn't have that funky problem with the snowfall algorithm like the GEFS either.

unfortunately they left your keyboard

LOL you obviously don't talk to Howard or RVArookie much But I am very very sorry that came off the way it did. It was insensitive. I didn't mean to minimize the personal attacks you put up with. That was nasty in a more personal way then the general crap most of us deal with. Thekind of stuff I get is much easier to just shrug off.

sure...shift the boundary east a little and this becomes a BIG storm. Of course shift it west some and suddenly its just a little frozen to rain again. I would be happy with what its throwing out there now.

Wasn't winter over yesterday lol yesterday here or yesterday in Australia? I can't keep it straight anymore.

Don't get me wrong...that isn't bad at all... but if you get that surface low just a little further east into TN it would increase the WAA forcing into our area even more and maybe get a better thump...but it would also probably encourage the low to jump to the coast from there...if its coming up that far west its going to continue to want to press north west of the mountains into the weakness there. I am NOT debbing this look...its a good look for some front end action, just saying if we wanted this to be even bigger getting that primary into eastern TN instead of western would be one way to do it.

Man I love that model There are some serious changes going on with the long range guidance right now, and I actually like most of it...but I will save that for after the euro play by play.

I would rather that be in eastern TN but not bad.

Man I love that model early March is a target window though... but way too far out to worry about it

FV3 has a HECS for places nw of 95 day 15-16 lol

??? Sorry if you thought I meant the personal attacks on you weren't bad. That was not what I meant, and I wished they had banned him long before they did. Some of the stuff you put up with directed at you was way out of line. I was talking about the quality of posts in general. I didn't say it wasn't bad...but it seemed just as bad last year and the year before. Maybe in a slightly different way. Last year was a non stop stream of people complaining that we were talking about the long range in the long range thread, or people throwing a tantrum every time a long range threat evaporated. There seemed to be more straight up trolling this year perhaps. But the percentage of legit to nonsense posts didn't seem any worse IMO. But I don't always pay attention to that and I am not as picky about strict thread rules as some so maybe I just didn't notice. I think I have a different view of what debbing is though. Sjnokoma and snowstorm23423423 were debbing when they would find any stupid reason to say its bad even when it actually looked good. But saying it looks like poo when it does look like poo isnt debbing its just being honest.

Sun is hot

The failure to get the Aleutian low this year was by far the biggest problem is getting the consistent cold/snowy look we expected. We have had snowy nino's with or without the NAO but that trough SW of Alaska is the one universal feature in almost all those good years! We had almost the complete opposite with the EPO ridge too far west, really a north pac ridge more than an EPO ridge at times.

And that might be why this year wasn't great. We ended up with more neutral enso conditions than nino in terms of the response. The SST was solidly weak nino but the MJO and SOI which affect the actual weather not the SST didn't respond. We have had good nina years. 1996 of course... 2000 wasn't a bad year with a couple nice storms in the middle of the winter. Better than most years! Not saying we want a nina but it doesn't necessarily mean we are doomed. Our odds of an above average snowfall year are about 16% in a nina...but they are only about 27% overall so its not like we go from a good chance to none...we go from crappy to extra crappy odds. Really...frankly, if you subtract moderate nino's which are almost all good.... our odds of a good snowfall winter are simply really low ~20% in any given year. So I am not optimistic like Maestro...but I don't think there are any signs we are more likely than normal to have a bad winter next year either. The numbers say at this point we have the same odds next year as we would any other year. Once we know some of the pattern drivers like enso and such we might be able to make some educated guesses, but look how those turned out this year!

The GGEM has been over amped all winter with EVERY storm. Remember when it was crushing us with the December storm? Just 48 hours ago it was taking the storm tomorrow up into central PA and missing me to the NORTH with heavy snow lol. I wouldn't even waste my time with it right now, its just adding noise.

The euro seemed to become a little more jumpy with storm track details after they started upgrading its resolution significantly several years ago. It's overall scores have improved, and it no doubt made the model better in many ways...but it seems to be a little less consistent. I also think some of this is expectations... I can remember back in the 90's and 2000's we really didn't take anything day 3-5 that seriously. Remember the high resolution guidance didn't even run past 48 hours back then, and stuff out at day 4-5 was considered a pipe dream kind of like we look at day 10 stuff now. But lately, because guidance has improved some, and we have seen a lot of storms stick and hold from day 7...we start looking at details and exact storm tracks of systems 4-5 days away. But the fact that such a weak and overall insignificant system changed a little bit from that range shouldn't be shocking. I think while guidance has improved a lot, our expectations in the medium to long range went up more than they did.

I was just talking with CAPE the other day about missing you around here lately...you are missed. So is Mappy. Is it really that much worse this year than last year? Just seemed like more of the same crap the last few years to me.

I moved this to banter because this is cluttering up the long range thread when there are legit things to talk about there, and this UBER long range discussion is more speculative than anything else. We have no idea what next year will be yet. My statistical analysis was purely based on odds in any given year without factoring in any of that. We won't get a good idea of what the enso state of next year will be until late Spring or Summer. Once we figure that out we will have a better idea what our prospects are. I wasn't trying to imply I think next year really will be good/bad or anything...just looking at the statistics to see if having a bad year this year changes the probabilities at all...it does not. My theory was completely a joke.

Worse than the average dropping is the median... the median has dropped from 26" down to about 15". That is a better judge of what is "typical" or normal. The fact is...over the last 30-50 years Baltimore's climo has become pretty hostile for snow. We "typically" get 2-3 good above 20" snowfall years a decade and the rest are below 20". So our NORMAL winter is below 20". How much below is kind of irrelevant to spend so much time parsing. I mean...is there THAT much difference between an 8" year and a 15" year? One good warning event hit vs missed...or a couple minor events...that is a fluke most of the time. The bottom line is 70% of the time the dominant pattern will be bad for snow and we will struggle and fight to get a few snowfalls. The one hope for the future is the NAO. We have been in a prolonged +AO/NAO cycle. Since those correlate so closely with our snowfall it stands to reason that could have as much to do with the decline as global warming. The funny thing is...our big years are getting bigger and our big storms are getting bigger, so if we actually got another -NAO cycle during this period of hyper precipitation events we could end up with an extreme run. Look at what has been happening NYC northward lately? A +NAO cycle shouldn't really be good for them either. But the abundance of extreme precip events has lead to a plethora of 8"+ events for them that has overcome that. If we get a -AO/NAO period that suppresses the boundary south more often...that could be us. It's a pipe dream but not completely crazy.

yep...but its worth running the numbers to see if there is something to the idea of long term patterns and trends since the atmosphere isnt a coin...but the numbers show the odds of snowfall each year are about the same regardless of the previous year.

I debated not even saying all this because it's going to truly depress you and maybe some others but you know what...ignorance is not the answer so here goes... You are not using the statistics correctly. First of all you cannot apply today's Baltimore climo averages to every time period. In the late 1800's and early 1900s Baltimore averaged 25" of snow and their median was 26" for example. So a 20" snowfall year then was below average and the same statistically as like a 16" year now. You have to use the climo averages for each time period to determine if a year was above or below average snowfall. Looking at the correct climo for each period Baltimore has had 7 periods of 4 or more straight below average snowfall in less than 150 years of records. That isn't an insignificant total. Twice Baltimore had 9 straight years with below average snowfall. So think...we might have 5 more years of below average snowfall to go after this one!!!! It happened twice before. On top of that you cannot simply look at the pure number of times there was 4 straight below average snowfall years because yes going into any run of below average snow the odds of getting 4 or more is low...but if we already had 3 (and that is assuming we don't get enough snow the rest of the way to end up above this year) then you are looking at it the wrong way. We have already had 3 straight below average snowfall years...what you need to do is look at past such examples and see what happened the following year and what the odds are of above vs below avg snowfall. There have been 34 times Baltimore just ended a 3rd straight below average snowfall winter... so what happened the next winter those 34 times? 24 times the following year was below average snowfall 10 times the following winter was above average snowfall So by those pure statistics next year has a 71 percent chance of being below average snowfall! That is almost exactly what the random chance of a below average snowfall winter is any given year...73%. Yea 73%.... in the last 30 years Baltimore has only had 8 above average snowfall winters, and 22 below. Those are facts. Any given year our chances of having above average snowfall are only 27%. Based on history...if we finish this year below avg next year that chance would be 29%. That is not a statistically significant difference given the limited sample size. In others words there is absolutely no evidence to support your claim that we are more likely to get above average snow next year because we had 3 below avg years...the odds are about the same as they are any year... a little below 30%.