psuhoffman

Sad but true

There were a couple runs when it was around day 6 that one storm produced a good mean. But it was inside the range I’m talking about and it was a false signal. Being on the southern fringe of heavy snow day 6 with no blocking is an absolutely atrocious spot to be! Several of the best posters here tried multiple times to warn everyone what was likely going to happen. And in some cases they were given shit for it! Im not always a deb before a threat. If I think it actually looks good I’ll say so. There have been some cases over the years when I was excited super early. I remember like 10 days out from that run in Feb 2010 being crazy excited by what I saw. Some were telling me to chill! I was on that Jan 2011 storm over a week out! I could go on but I don’t always deb a threat. We just haven’t had any good ones lately and so some are getting over excited by anything. Any hope even when it’s not a truly great setup But I’m really talking about when we’re 8-12 days away identifying the early signals of a big period coming. Nothing yet this year has done that.

That’s upslope from the two cutters. The euro has some snow/ice from a wave after. The gfs has never really been on board for that.

I’m not saying the snowless streak will go on that long. For the record I think the snowlessness is a combo of bad cycle and warming. We likely get a somewhat better period at some point even with warming. But let’s say it doesn’t improve. What if we continue at the same snowfall rate we’ve had on avg the last 8 years where DC is averaging about what Charlotte NC or Spartanburg SC should! How long do you think before those denying the climate has changed come around? 2 more years? 5 more years? Are we in 2040 and it’s been 25 years since Baltimore had a 6” snow and they’re still saying it’s just bad luck and we will turn it around any day now?

But it’s never actually looked that good. We’ve had some good pattern looks. But honestly the ensemble snow has yet to light up the way it did historically when we were about to get crushed. I know it’s been a long time but like 10 days before some of our epic runs in 2014, 2015, 2016 those things started to go nuts. Not some 2-3” mean. I mean showing 8”+ as a mean over is for a 5 day period. We’ve seen nothing like that. We get excited when there is like a 4” mean over us but then Iook at the probabilities and it’s only like a 30% chance of 1” because that mean is skewed high by a few huge members. Fact is so far guidance has nailed both the long wave patterns and that even when the pattern would flip better the snow would remain north of us! Looking ahead the snow means look “ok” for the next 12 days or so. Not amazing but they say it’s possible we get snow. After that from day 12-20 when the nao is positive with a +pna look shut the lights atrocious. They then pick back up and look good for that range again into Feb as the nao goes negative again.

Except the snow mean on the long range guidance looks absolutely atrocious for the one week we have the +nao +pna. It starts to look better once the nao flips negative again.

I mean it depends how big. If we got a match 58 redux but in Feb so the whole area got 50” (qpf was absolutely insane with that storm had it been a month sooner that isn’t a stretch) then you can’t complain. But I agree one 6-12” storm wouldn’t make this an A/B winter if that’s all we got. That essentially would be another 1995 and no one remembers that fondly.

Not worried about the day 15 “relax”. EPS goes from this day 15 to this 3 days later and 3 days after that the nao is tanking again. By the time the pattern goes to crap in the east the pacific has already resumed a favorable configuration to bounce right back.

Not gonna happen. For the last 7 years every failure has been couched by “but Nina” by the crowd that doesn’t want to acknowledge the “elephant”. Meanwhile we’ve had a Nino and 2 neutral winters in there and they made convenient excuses to dismiss that fact. I’ve made my case that while the persistent Nina base state is part of this, I’ve never denied that, but more is going on contributing here. If we have a total fail during a second Nino, one that did couple and produced the pattern we wanted…at that point I don’t have to say anything. “Scoreboard” should be plenty enough. Anyone still in denial isn’t going to be swayed by some novel I write on here so what’s the point?

Why does everyone think I’d be unhappy with 3-4” of snow? Maybe if it was a fringe and 20 miles away got 12”+ then ya that kinda sucks. But I was thrilled with that 3-4” storm I got in December! When I’m analyzing patterns my goals are big. I can’t control anything so why not look for signals for big storms? But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy if we get a regular snow. And it’s not like we’re getting those anyways. It’s not been snowing at all lately. My issue with progressive waves isn’t that they aren’t a HECS. It’s that they typically have a narrow zone of snow and the patterns that produce them are rarely going to lead to a snowy season. Rooting to get lucky with those is basically setting our high bar for the season at below average for the region as a whole. Ya maybe someone gets lucky to hit a couple and beat climo but as a whole we don’t get snowy seasons that way.

Frankly we've already had the pattern since Xmas...just not the snow yet

Well this is it... we are getting the exact pattern we wanted from this Nino and its lining up exactly with our best snow climo. Next 30 days on EPS Temps If we don't get a lot of snow out of this it won't be because we didn't get the nino pattern we wanted.

I see what you are saying, and historically I would be more excited...but given recent trends do we think that would still be "cold enough"? Also, its a deamplifying pattern with no real thermal boundary in the east, just a big dome of decaying cold under the NS. Not sure how likely getting an organized storm there would be. Anything that amplified would seek out the real thermal boundary way up to our north. So while its not the torch you might think looking at the H5 I am not enthused at the chances of snow there either. BUT...the pacific is already aligning into the PERFECT look by day 15 to begin the process of getting back to a good snowstorm threat window by early February, that is the best thing I take from that day 15.

I agree with everything you said, but "better" is a low bar given what the recent results have been lol.

Having a significant cluster of "wins" is a huge deal. The GEFS mean looked similar yesterday but it was a false flag because it was a compromise between two bad solutions. This indicates the euro thinks we have a legit shot.

I agree with this, except I am not sure there is an easy path to a decent snow with a less amplified solution either. And I don't just mean a HECS...if the STJ/NS energy misses the phase I don't see much of a path here. Without a phase that STJ energy will get stretched and is washing out under the NS flow. Nothing to turn the flow and we all know how a pure SWFE here goes with those 4,000 ft ridges to our SW. There isn't room here for the STJ to go it alone. We need phased. SO imo the "easy" path to a win is root for that 50/50 feature to trend better then we can survive the phased solution. If the 50/50 feature fails I think this has a VERY low bar. Either a phased track to our NW or a really weak or completely non event would become the two most likely scenarios.

I REALLY like that mean but I would have to dig into the members and see how we got that mean. Is it the average of two camps...cutters and suppressed, which was a false singnal on the GEFS a day ago, I just didnt want to spoil the mood. Or is there a genuine camp of "win" solutions in that mean. Big difference. Unfortunately I have to finish up some reports right now and wont get to really look that deep until later but curious about that.

@Ji TLDR version...there are multiple ways for us to get F'd

Agree with Brooklyn and CAPE here. Ji, its complicated. It's always a balancing act with multiple variables on either side of the scale. The objective is to get a wave to track just under us with cold in place. There are multiple ways to do that. Some less complicated, some more so...we want to root for the least complicated way usually. Last time the general track of the wave was set in stone pretty far in advance. It was a less noisy setup. The track of the surface feature was perfect...but it was fairly weak and we didn't have any blocking in place to suppress the mid level warming ahead of the trough axis. The one thing that could have fixed that was a cold thermal profile going in, I've seen much worse setups work but required more cold. So IMO the simplest problem was not cold enough. But we could have obsessed over the 100 other tiny details that could have been changed one way or another also. This time...the equation is different. It's a much more amplified situation. We have a colder airmass but we also have a really strong TPV centered right on top of us which could really amplify and pull a storm to our NW if other things don't go right. Not every situation is the same and requires the same solution.

yup

not really... or are you going to make the same mistake as many did with the last "threat". The 50/50 moved out too soon, there is NOTHING to stop the mid level southerly flow, the low tracks a little too close given those first 2 things...the exact solution the euro is showing here would NOT end the way you want it too, it would trend the same exact way the last how many of these threats that looked good if you only pay attention to a clow snow map did. But this one has more potential to trend better given some of the other details here. There is more cold around. There is a 50/50 which is a new feature actually and if it continues to trend stronger could change this equation. There is a lot of stream interaction that could change the equation. The last event was much more simple and locked into a general progression at range than this one is. But this run exactly as is was not what I want the final solution to be or the snow will end up NW of us. We could get a nastier ice solution though with more cold around this time from that kind of progression.

on the whole I like some of the changes... I want to be in a position where we can root for a more amplified solution not against it, so getting more confluence and a stronger 50/50 feature in front and a more positive tilted alignment of the whole features initially, puts us in that position where we now want a stronger solution possibly.

It's messy, but given all the players here I don't expect to see any consistency between runs. But one thing I REALLY like is the last couple runs of the euro trended this way and now this run completely splits the TPV and ends up with a peice in the 50/50 space. IF that part of this is real it increases our chances of a win if the other parts line up later on. WIthout that 50/50 feature...even if the other parts come together we could still lose with a cutter. If we trend towards a nice 50/50 feature then we can just root for a more phased stronger amplified wave...simple, without having to root for 10,000 little things to play together nicely. Just my take on this so far.

Differences better to our northeast but more phasing earlier out west. Wash? Dunno