psuhoffman

But there was a significant drop in the probabilities. There was an increase in suppressed OTS solutions. But were getting into the range where the ensembles follow the op trends mostly. It's not some horrible proclamation, it was a bad run of the euro, op and ens. So what, its been wrong plenty lately. If we take an average of where ALL the guidance is right now its actually a pretty decent solution for us, and I would prefer needing that than ANY one model right now. It's slightly troubling the euro went off on a tangent with a suppressed solution today, because yes it has the best physics and so if one model will sniff out some change first its the most likely, so yea I would prefer it to be some other model off on the tangent....but I still wouldn't take the euro v EVERYTHING ELSE. The other models that fail actually do it in the oppposite way, too amplified! Well except the icon but having that POS in your camp is actually a mark of shame.

it's not so much confluence here as simply where the boundary ends up, but if the TPV were to shift slightly and that boundary ends up further NW that would help yes. There are other moving parts though, a stronger wave would help also.

That's not how they work. All the effort is put into making the operational (and ensemble control just at lower resolution) as accurate as possible. The purpose of the individual ensemble members is actually to produce a spread of solutions. Because we know we will not initialize the atmosphere completely correctly AND we won't be able to project it perfectly even if we did...they produce members that have been slightly perturbed (changed) in some way in order to show a spectrum of possibilities to account for the errors. This can tell us a variety of things. At long leads the average of all those solutions is way more accurate than the operational. Even though the operational is the most accurate at short leads, over time chaos takes over and the average of a ton of slightly perturbed runs is more likely to catch what is most likely going to happen in the distant future than any one run. It can also help tell us if the operation just had a hiccup and spit out a bad run. If the ensemble members are all different even at shorter leads its likely the op got something wrong. But I don't think they track each members accuracy scores. The goal isn't to create a specific member that is accurate. I'm not even sure the same members are perturbed the same way each run. I would be curious about that myself.

OK we need to put out an APB for the real Chuck. They have him tied up to a chair in a basement somewhere.

It complicates things. It can work...but you're right it adds another level of complexity and we don't usually do complicated. The first big storm in January 1987 was an example of how a Hudson bay vortex can work though...but it requires us to get the NS to play nice with the STJ and lately we know how that often ends.

Depends...if we truly go suppressed and don't get anymore legit threats yea I would say it would be unfair to blame this on the elephant in the room. But...we've already wasted a couple "in the box" storms this year. We need a system to track through a specific area for us to get a snowstorm. How many of those chances you think we get in a winter? In 2010 there were 5. DC only wasted 1 and it was very early Dec, places just NW got snow. The other 4 all produced significant snow. 2016 had 5 and DC partially wasted 4 of them. A couple had some degree of mixed precip and some snow, one was in March and was just too warm, one was early January and still too warm following the Dec torch...but out of 5 perfect tracks only 1 produced big snow. Luckily it was BIG BIG BIG snow. But that's why 2016 wasnt 2010, both had 5 storms through our box but 4/5 were too warm in 2016 v 1/5 in 2010. If at the end of the winter we had 4 or 5 waves that took a perfect track and only 1 or worse none produced snow...then I think its fair to say the elephant had something to do with it. IF we go the rest of this winter without anymore ideal track systems then maybe we chalk it up to more of a fluke thing. But will any of us even survive the slaughterhouse this place will become by then to do that analysis anyways?

8-0 is way more probable than 8-3. On the grand scheme of things the snow with any wave is a pretty small geographic area. The degree of error we need in either direction to go from 8 to 3 is way way way less than the permutations that can produce 0. A HUGE area will get 0 lol.

Think about the ensembles. They make minor perturbation's to the initial conditions and it completely changes the outcome once you get out past a few days because very minor differences at short ranges become exponential at 100+ hours. So even if we had the math perfected to perfectly predict the atmosphere (which we dont) we still couldnt actually do it because we don't have 100% accurate measurements from every inch of the atmosphere to initialize hour 0. And unless you get the initial 0 hour totally 100% correct the rest of your projection will be wrong and the further out in time you go the more wrong it will be. So what happens is every run we do the best way can with all our observations and satellite and aircraft data input into the model to initialize the atmosphere correctly. Then the model uses that to project whats going to happen. But then the next run we get new observations and it sees what we got wrong last time and fixes it, and that changes the outcome. Sometimes not much, certainly not much at 6 or 12 or 24 hours...but out at 100 hours pretty minor changes can have huge impacts. A couple MB wrong with a feature at 6 hours can end up changing the result by hundreds of miles at 120 hours away.

Well duh...if I lived in VA beach or Richmond VA or Ocean City MD I might like how that mean looks...but I don't I live in this area.

Oddly all the guidance at 12z kinda fell into their biases I've observed, GGEM/UKMET over amped, ICON progressive, GFS too far SE, except the Euro which was off on its own planet. Just an observation, not sure what to do with it.

That’s not gonna work.

I will say this...we have now had 17 days of a damn near perfect longwave pattern for snow, pretty much since the pacific jet shifted around xmas. And so far we have 2 perfect track rain events and 2 cutters to show for it. Yes I know we were left with a torched thermal profile after the December Pac onslaught, I don't know why everyone feels the need to point that out. But it will be comical in a Shakespeare tragedy kinda way, if we continue somehow through winter...finding ways to fail despite a pattern that matches every huge snow winter we've had. After being too warm the TPV drops down on top of us and suppresses everything for weeks...then maybe we finally get it to relax but it shifts too far west and we get cutters again. The meltdowns will be entertaining at least.

I know you're kidding but I do not think this is the type of setup where we will see a huge NW shift once guidance does settle on a solution. Right now its bouncing all over because fairly minor changes in a lot of factors have a huge impact on this, so they are all over the place. But once they settle in on a basic solution I don't expect HUGE shifts NW with the boundary. This isn't the same type scenario as last week.

There were plenty of EPS members with this suppressed nothing solution. There are two options here... either the Euro op is leading the way and the others are now just where it was yesterday and will catch up to the suppressed idea soon. Or the op euro just randomly drew a solution out of different chaotic options affected by minor changes and it messed one of them up and it will come around to the others soon. I have no idea which one it is, and neither does anyone else.

You know this is BS. First of all of course a cutter doesn't just go away because for a storm to cut up into the lakes it has to be way way way more amplified than the subtle arctic boundary wave we are tracking for our snow here. A very minor difference won't make a 988 cutter just turn into nothing but a subtle difference on a weak boundary wave can. But cutters change all the time, but we don't give a crap if the snowfall goes from 12" to 6" in Green Bay or if the snow line moves 50 or 100 miles when its 600 miles away from us!

how often has it snowed lately?

I told you that probably wont work. Even that control run wasn't going to work and it wasn't even going to be close. I saw some of the posts about it and went and looked and was like...huh this was going to be way OTS. The angle that trailing wave is coming in at and the angle of the trough trailing from the TPV makes it almost impossible for that final caboose SW to amplify and come north. It's going to swing way too far SE before turning the corner. Plus, with 2 waves ahead of it, its simply unlikely to have enough left along the STJ boundary for it to activate a healthy storm in time. Yes, in an ideal world we get the TPV out ahead and then something comes in behind but the spacing isnt even close for that to work. I was just thrilled the guidance went from keying on the lead wave on Monday/Tuesday to the second wave on Tuesday. That allows the chance for the front the clear and to get a healthy enough boundary wave like the GFS. You're going greedy and trying for the next wave which yes if you were to change some variables would have HECS potential but its too late in the game to get those changes imo. I've been wrong but man would I be really really shocked if that last trailing wave was able to turn the corner and amplify. I hope I am wrong but that seems far fetched imo.

we definitely don't have to worry about Heisy's NW phobia with the euro. I don't mind seeing some stuff SE and some stuff NW at this point.

I get what you're saying and you're right if we got even more separation but there are risks with that idea too. The euro control was going to be a miss. That trailing wave is really positively tilted without enough separation and I'm not sure we can get that to trend enough at this point. At least everything has converged on the second wave being the key, instead of that lead wave that has no hope. But you're rooting for that 3rd wave, which does have the highest upside potential, but I'm not sure its viable, were getting closer and would need a huge adjustment to get to that solution.

@Bob Chill was 100% right about the relax. Ive not been concerned about it and thought it would be VERY brief, but now I'm starting to think it doesn't even happen at all. The higher heights are actually mostly from higher avg heights above the levels we give a crap about, the low and mid levels are reasonably cold, and the STJ is undercutting the pattern with a beautiful EPO/PNA ridge. We could get a snowstorm easy in what was supposed to be the "relax". Then all 3 major guidance systems transition back to a -AO/NAO regime with the STJ undercutting a EPO/PNA ridge. That is the "it" look and it holds for the whole month of Feb on all guidance. I am glad I didn't lower my seasonal snowfall totals when I was thinking about it a week or two ago.

at least its trending the right direction the last 3 runs imo.

But that progression would set up an overrunning type threat around the 23-25th so either way we have multiple paths to win in this pattern which is what I like. We usually fail when we need everything to go "exactly one way". Unfortunately when we all decided to live here we chose to spend all our cap money on other areas and left ourselves with a drunk placekicker with balance issues. We need REALLY wide goalposts if we want to win usually.

In this situation what is really creating the snow is the moisture transport across the arctic boundary. This isn't a coma head scenario. We just haven't had an arctic boundary near us to have this kind of set up in so long its not something we are familiar with. But with that kind of boundary all you need is to get some modest moisture transport across the arctic front and it will wring out every drop of moisture into super high ratio pow pow. If you look at the mid level plots from hour 120 and 126 you see there is enough backing in the flow along the front to get the mid level flow across the boundary. Boom. We don't need a super deep or perfect track coastal storm for that to work. Just an amplified enough SW along the boundary to get that cross boundary moisture transport in the mid levels. It's almost like an anafront setup actually. But in this case along the arctic boundary which has much more potential.

Don't be greedy this run was damn near perfect, cold smoke event for everyone. Yea we could root for more amplified but that could introduce other issues. Obviously we don't get the option but I would stick with this run if I could.

but I don't even know if that is necessarily a good thing, ultimately I think the two things that matter most are that the initial wave doesn't amplify at all to leave space for the next, and that the next one is more amplified.