psuhoffman

My only fear for DC not breaking the 1” streak would be if this continues to amp a little and it pushed the arctic boundary (which is the focus of that band) NW of the city to quickly.

There is a model war going on between the gefs and eps for Feb 1-15. Both end up the same place the second half of Feb but the eps says Feb 1-15 is workable. Not great but decent. Gefs is a shit the blinds look Feb1-15. Another “odd” thing is despite the great looking pattern on the eps the snow means remain low. Below avg even for after this next 10 days! I’ve been looking at the control runs the last 5 days to try to see why. They have matched the mean h5 look so that was helpful. For whatever reason the storm track was just to our northwest every time a significant wave came along despite what was otherwise a great pattern. Aleutian low. Epo ridge. -nao. Lower heights in the Atlantic. Storm track was either suppressed (I don’t mean snow south of us I mean the waves get washed out) or if amplified to our north. This isn’t a one day thing it’s been a consistent theme for a week. I don’t make too much of those long range snow means but I’d prefer they match the pattern. It’s odd with a h5 that says the mid atlantic should be the target the models still are saying it’s the upper Midwest to northern New England. Maybe others have a theory why.

6z euro control improved

Except this one is still way out there considering how volatile it is...this is a NS dominant event not a STJ wave that is likely to be resolved at longer leads. The general pattern is pretty darn good for this one, all the parts are there we just need that SW to be a little more amplified and come in a bit further south and both those trends were evident on this run. I just want to be in the game at this stage. This definitely keeps me invested.

none of the other panels are past day 4, but for some reason the h5 updated out to day 5.5 on wxbell. I can tell its better but not like that 12z GFS run...but its a significant difference from the 12z euro. Much closer to something big but the SW looks like it needed to be slightly more amplified to get it done. But huge move in the right direction from 12z IMO.

The SW in question seems a little stronger and a little south of 12z at 102

These are just teasers. Our two hecs come in Mid Feb and early March.

You aren’t kidding. It’s a slight amplitide Away from capturing the developing coastal. It’s trapped from climbing past our latitude by the flow. If it can get captured by the energy at the tail of the trough….boom

It’s not 12z but it’s good enough to keep my interest.

This is gonna be close…

Hold on…

SW looks slightly more amplified and tpv oriented less suppressive than 18z. But not back to 12z. Somewhere in between.

What’s the bar for folks on this?

As recently as 2013, 2014, and 2015 they obliterated the DC area in snowfall. What’s happen since 2016 imo is almost all our snow has come from lucky hits by progressive boundary waves during short periods when we got an epo pna ridge. Those don’t favor Winchester. They downslope in those plus they are kinda random and usually if you’re on the cold side of the boundary it’s cold enough. Being NW and higher offers no real advantage in those. So recently the difference is less. I think if we go back to a +pdo with more coastal storms and inside runners they will go back to doing better again.

A high res ensemble seems like a good idea in theory. Have they tried to develop a system that actually works?

It didn’t snow anywhere in 2020 or 2023. And 2022 were mostly SWFE which aren’t great for the Shenandoah valley. But they can do way better in some years. But I don’t think it’s as reliable as it was 20 years ago.

Hopefully this will help you visualize. Now imagine if that circulation expands! It shifts the subtropical flow north. Which does 2 things. It simply shifts everything north. That’s not good if you were already on the southern edge of where it typically snowed much! But it also compresses the flow between the subtropics and the polar jet. So it speeds up the northern get stream. Which will tend to flatten it and prevent digging and make it harder to phase things since waves are racing by faster. It’s a lose lose.

Thanks. So essentially the sref is the last guidance of the previous cycle. Some think it’s a preview of the next cycle lol. Frankly with so many high res models now, NAM12, nam3, rgem, hrdrps, fv3, ARW1, ARW2, HRRR, Im not sure how much the SREF is going to tell us we didn’t already know. Especially given their outdated since I don’t think they’ve been updated in a long time.

Hmm

Is the 21z SREF run off the 18z models?

I won’t lie the lack of a healthy stj wave is hurting our chances a lot. But I do give this setup more of a chance than a typical NS miller b. If you remember when I explained how Feb 10, 2010 worked out…this has a similar flow going for it. as the NS SW enters the pac NW there is a wall in the flow ahead of it. It’s going to have to dive southeast and end to near X. Both feature move east in unison. If the wave can survive the shred factory flow in the Midwest and get to us intact as the tpv finally gets out if the way and the trough amplifies along the east coast it could develop in time.

I can't remember if the SREF is technically the last of the previous runs...or the first of the next ones. From the number of times it does NOT predict what the other meso models are about to do, I kind of think its the last run of the previous data.

We should get it