psuhoffman

A couple days ago I pointed out how the long range guidance had lost the really good look for the last week of December. Since then the extended long range guidance took a significant step in the wrong direction for the first week of January too. This is just an observation. Right or wrong sticking our head in the sand about it won’t change anything. I’m still hopeful but it seems it’s as much the Atlantic side that’s the issue…guidance is shifting to a less favorable nao look which requires an even better pacific. 2003 for example the nao wasn’t great but the pacific was perfect so it didn’t matter. The really good looks on long range guidance a week ago were a product of a decent pacific coupled with a great Atlantic look. The problem is both those equations keep shifting the wrong way as we get closer. No prediction here pure observation. I need another week to ingest this and decide if I think it’s just a slower progression or an actual seasonal problem. Both gefs and eps for early January. 72 hours ago Latest runs

Reality is what it is. It’s been getting warmer. We don’t have to debate why or if it’s our fault since those issues have become politicized. But it’s warmer. That’s just a fact. It’s not impossible for us to be cold. But it’s harder since at any given moment much less of Earth is cold than it used to be. So the probabilities continue to stack more and more against us. Why is that controversial? Thermometers seem like a pretty basic concept to me.

Maybe this is just semantics. I dunno. A jet extension is fine. A record fast jet extension is too much of a good thing and shifts the whole pattern east which floods us with maritime pac air and doesn’t allow for a northerly flow until too far east to mix enough continental polar air into the equation. The issue is some (who might not really know the nuances of what they speak) are just saying “the jet extension” without the necessary context. What we want is the pac jet to chill just a bit. That’s all.

The actual main vortex is placed fine, the problem is the pac jet on roids is blasting off pieces of it and crashing them into the pacific NW. That’s different from more cutoff STJ systems coming into southern CA. Once (if) the pac jet relaxes just a wee bit (it’s a technical term) the whole pattern would fix itself relatively quick imo. It might take a week to get cold air (or colder I don’t expect arctic air) established.

Thanks. I’m NE of Frederick. I’m on a ridge just north of Manchester in Carroll County. I ended up with 3.8 to be exact.

If you loop the last 48 hours on the gefs and geps you can see positive progress happening.

If the pac jet relaxes just a bit it would solve pretty much all the problems. Those other imperfections wouldn’t matter much if you retrograde everything out west 5-10 degrees.

I don’t think the end of the EPS was that bad. I thought it took a step finally. I’ll be interested in what the weeklies show as its extension today, just for fun lol. ideally we want a -nao and to get that pac trough to retro a bit to get that ridge (x) back closer to an axis along Idaho. But this is closer. The highest heights are no longer right on top of us. Yea there is no arctic air but that’s par for a Nino. Look at the flow. The Canada ridge is pulling back enough to get a flow we can work with. I could see something working within that framework. It’s not as bad as the last few runs imo.

We had a perfect track rainstorm in Jan 2016 a couple weeks before…ya know. We also had a perfect track rainstorm in early March 2018 then a couple weeks later…so it’s not the worst thing. It’s more indicative of the storm track with the stj we just need a period that’s cold enough. Are you ready for my detailed deeply analytical thorough answer…. YES

I let the kids play outside this morning since school was delayed. Snow cover still holding strong.

This is good analysis to do. In the end a compromise seems to have been best. The 10-1 were a bit high even here. Some runs were close but others had me at 5+. But as I expected the depth maps were low for places that did get banding. If it snows hard marginal air/ground temps can be overcome. We’ve seen this time and again. Kuchera I think was the closest of the pre made clown maps. Overall the euro did really well with this one imo.

Low sun angle but also…the clouds we get up here from a NW flow off the Great Lakes helps a lot. Those clouds tend to dissipate just SE of us where the elevation drops and it makes a big difference.

This was another case where there was a visible difference between my house and Ebb Valley when I dropped the kids off. Not as pronounced as Dec 2020 when I had 3” up here and only a coating down there but it was about 1” difference. ~250 ft additional elevation makes a difference in these super marginal events.

I’ll run the numbers later. Going back to sleep for a couple hours.

4am update 32 degrees still light to moderate snow. Had just under 4”

Grass starting to cave

It’s coming down pretty good now.

Down to 33, just need rates to pick up. Precip is too light.

34 all snow

I look down on him…literally. He is like 200 feet below me in the valley between my ridge and the town proper of Manchester which is also kind of on a ridge.

You type a lot in your sleep

32 on top of cotoctin now. That’s the place to be for this one.

There is some slushy flakes mixed in but it’s not coming down that hard. If it was it would flip to snow.

I couldn’t be sure so I pulled the car out to see on the windshield, can confirm there are some slush bombs mixed in. Change over seems eminent.

Down to 36