psuhoffman

I'm always down to meet up, but I have the kids this weekend. I might try to host another BBQ at my place this summer if there is any interest.

If the timing and track remains how it looks now...precip probably starts with temps around 35, the problem is it gets into the 40's in the DC area on Friday and clouds roll in before dark. But temps drop quickly to 31-32 or so once precip starts. Down to 30 or so by the time it ends.

about 20 miles north is better...Conway gets a lot of snow but they are south of the spine of the Apps and they are vulnerable to thaws. Once you get north of Mt Washington in NH and north of the ridge line that Sunday River and Sugarloaf are on in ME they really don't get any warm ups all winter and hold snow cover from like Thanksgiving until May.

The excitement from me though was based on analog based forecasting not day 20 NWP which we all know is incredibly unreliable. Winter forecasts, which were largely optimistic this year, came out long before guidance started honking for February. The reason for my excitement was that I had identified analogs based on similar years with respect to things like enso, solar cycle, QBO, PDO, and they largely indicated that at some point from late January through March we would have a period that looked like that. 1958, 1966, 1987, 2010 and 2016 all scored highest in my weighted analogs, and while there was variability with exactly when it would happen all featured a period that was HECS friendly for us at some point after mid January. So when guidance started showing that...it was exciting not because of the NWP but because it matched the past results from this type of Nino. If we were simply basing our forecasts on day 20 weather models that would be insane and horrible forecasting. But some of your posts make it seem like that is what people are doing. Look, right now it looks like I was very wrong. I might end up giving myself an F for this winter if things do not turn around. I am not throwing in the towel yet but its getting hard to remain optimistic. I am very critical of myself. You don't have to tell me when I am wrong. But it's not fair to imply that the people who put a lot of research and time and effort into long range forecasting which is very difficult, are just looking at long range models and expecting whatever they say.

Man shush that ish before the snow gods hear you, next run it will be 67 degrees with a rain snow line near Montreal

Liverwurst

Euro is colder also, snow falls with surface temps of 25-27 for you and me. And the high on Saturday is 33 in Winchester and 31 here. Might actually feel like winter for a minute or two.

The euro is picking up on something that is likely in this type of NS wave running between the polar and arctic boundaries. There are likely to be two snow maximums, one just north of the polar boundary along just north of the rain snow line and a second further north along the arctic boundary. Despite the southern max having the deeper moisture the northern one almost always ends up the actual snow max because of significantly higher ratios. That might be muted somewhat this time by warmer than normal boundary temps even along that "arctic" boundary...but even if temps are only like 30 ratios will be pretty good with the colder temps in the DGZ which is what matters most so long as surface temps are below freezing.

My guess is the very low resolution of the SV maps makes it especially difficult to run an accurate snow map along the rain snow line and even worse if it's a map like Kuchera which factors in ratios. Both of those things require pretty fine details that a low resolution smoothed map would lack.

But if you look at -QBO Moderate or stronger Nino's there are way less of those "fluke" non snowy outliers. Almost all of them were +QBO. We just wasted a very rare combination that historically is responsible for most of our BIG snowfall seasons. Baltimore averages over 40" in -QBO Nino's. I guess I am not as quick to just chalk off the loss of a rare opportunity for us to have an epic winter. I think the common thread here, and it happened in 2019 also, is that the pacific base state is hostile to the canonical Nino longwave pattern establishing with any consistency. I am not saying all of that is CC related. I think the PDO is a large part of that equation and that is a cyclical thing that we are just stuck in the wrong cycle right now. But we have had way more snow in past -PDO cycles and I think the reason is there are other factors, the warmer waters in general all over, the expanded hadley cells which compresses the jet over the pacific and leads to a more progressive NS and displaced north jet. This can also destructively interfere with blocking and I think it did in both 2019 and this year and is partly to blame for why those years failed to establish canonical nino patterns. Chuck thinks the hadley cell issue is also cyclical. I really hope he is correct. I am more skeptical. I apply basic deductive reasoning here and see how the warmer waters in the pacific would both be related to CC and also cause the shift north in the jet we've observed. But I can't prove it. I've not done the research. I am just using anecdotal observation and deductive reasoning. But I also admit that the PDO could be exacerbating this issue and when that does eventually shift maybe enough of this comes off that we can live with the results. But the problem is we are currently stuck in the cycle that we are, and the PDO is negative, and those other factors are making an already bad cycle even more hostile, and the failure of 2 nino's within this cycle to do anything to adjust the base state in our favor to me indicates we might be up shits creek and cannot expect a truly epic snowy season no matter what the specific pattern drivers are until this current pacific decadal cycle ends. And that may or may not be for a while. It's hard to predict, some of these -PDO cycles have lasted 10 years or so and so maybe this is almost over, but one cycle lasted 25 years and in that case we might have another 15+ years to go. I was hopeful that a strong -qbo nino could countermand this hostile cycle, but it appears it cannot. I'm not sure if I will ever predict above normal snowfall again until this pacific cycle ends. However long that is.

How come lately only ninos fail to produce the historically typical pattern. Nina’s are a lock though.

We don’t always get to decide when we get lucky and wave tracks perfectly across VA. Yea ideally we want it to happen in a cold pattern and typically that’s when we have a better chance since to get a wave under us usually takes a colder regime. But since we rarely are cold anymore more of these opportunities are happening when it’s warm even in dead winter. But we used to be able to eke out snow even in a warm regime if we got a perfect amplified enough wave pass. Feb 1997, my senior year in HS, sticks out. That pattern was garbage. Actually a lot of simularity to now with a ridge in southern Canada and pacific puke zonal airmass. But we got a very similar setup with a perfect stj wave and we got a 4-8” super wet slop snowstorm in northern VA. I lived in Herndon VA then, right next to frying pan park. There were lots of other examples in the case studies. Storms where I went “how the F was that snow”. Nothing about the pattern was any good except the wave pass. That doesn’t seem to work anymore. Lately when we get a perfect track started during a crap pattern it’s just too warm. The track is irrelevant unless there is a cold regime in place. And that even more a problem since for the last 8 years warm patterns have outnumbered cold ones significantly.

I think wet snow that melts quick is likely the best we can do. The pattern is actually ok. I don’t agree they were doomed. But there is no true cold anywhere outside Siberia. The oceans on both sides of us are on fire. Even when guidance had a mega block temps were meh. We can get perfect track waves, and we can get an airmass that’s a few degrees colder than today which would mean it’s possible to get the results places just to our north got, snow. But even here most of the 6” I got this morning is gone now. There won’t be any true arctic air. So as soon as the snow ends and the sun comes out it’s gonna melt. If that reality ruins it you probably best move on. I’m just being realistic here, not trying to be a dick.

So if a strong Nino can’t countermand the pac base state what can?

To be fair I don’t think the solid mets were excited because of the models. They were excited because the top analogs to our current enso are some of our snowiest winters ever! The fact the models supported that was just an ancillary piece.

It was better, WW is just WW

It will juice up some. Focus on the track

No I hid him in my basement.

so fluffy clouds... JK man you have been on point, if you can get past the shroom inspired moments

@WxUSAFthank you

I agree with the macro reason you're both citing. But I think something larger is at play and I don't mean CC directly. The exact same thing happened in 2019 and I think its the same reason. Yea wave breaking blocking is tenuous but for months all long range guidance got to the same end result, just sometimes in slightly different ways. Some had a scandy ridge retro. Some wave breaking. Some sooner some a week later...but all by mid February had the same epic look. I don't think we can blame the failure of one cutter for the whole thing falling apart because for months guidance got to the end result in different ways. Had the pattern idea been correct the next wave should have done it. There was something larger scale than an individual wave break they were seeing in the global divers leading them to expect what we all expected. The reason I fell for is so hard was it fit all the analogs to this winter. I wasn't basing my expectations on the models, the models were matching my expectations. In the end I think we both fell victim to the same thing, which is the pacific base state is not conducive the the canonical nino response, no matter how strong the nino is. Even in Dec and Jan when we got legit blocking the NS was way more active than in a typical nino. It's one reason the January snowy period features 2 rather mundane snow events but not more. The NS was in the way all the time. ANd in the end the faster than expected NS, which is tied to the pacific base state lately, ran interference in the blocking and we got a muted pattern response. We still might get snow but we didn't get the epic pattern. We could debate how much this is linked to CC, and that comes down to how much the current pacific base state with a persistent western pac warm pool, expanded hadley cell and nina ish MJO dominance is CC v cyclical. The PDO is part of this and that part most certainly is cyclical so some of this is most certainly NOT CC. I think those other 2 factors are CC related...but I can't prove it. We don't have to fight about that though, because regardless of the underlying cause and how permanent v cyclical it is...the effects on recent winters including this one is the same.

is there a way to move my last reply to Scarlet over to the new thread?

I agree with Chuck here. This exact same thing happened in 2019. All through the fall and early winter the guidance advertised some epic pattern starting mid January. It held until it was on the doorstep. It got to about day 10 then suddenly and epically collapsed. And similar to this year, we did get some snow that winter and so it wasn't a complete disaster. But the epic winter idea on guidance never came about. And it was mostly for the same reason, the epic looking blocking collapsed. And there was a SSW that winter also! A lot of similarities. The consensus after that year was that the weak nino wasn't able to overcome the strong -PDO pacific base state. As for why the modeling failed...it was discussed then that the long range guidance is heavily weighted towards the large scale pattern drivers. The long range guidance saw the same things we saw when many of us made snowy winter forecasts. They guidance saw a basin wide nino, a -QBO, weak SPV, and expected the canonical atmospheric response to those factors and predicted it. They did the same thing we did when we made our winter forecasts in October and November. This year many, including myself, discounted a repeat of 2019 because we rationalized that 2019 was a weak nino and this was a strong nino. But in the end maybe the easiest explanation is that even this strong nino was unable to countermand the base state. The depressing part of that is if a strong nino cannot overcome this nina ish pacific base state then probably nothing can and we simply need to wait for this whole pacific cycle to end, however long that may take, be it a few more years or maybe another decade, to expect a truly BIG snowfall year like the one some of us predicted this winter.

I think the question to "why" is legitimate though.