psuhoffman

lol I’m not a head in the sand kinda guy. Give us all the evidence and I’d some can’t handle the truth…that’s on them. Anyone who’s been in this game more than 2 seconds is used to the up and downs. Mostly downs. But that’s not that bad. Yea it’s a step back but not a disaster. To me they looks like it must have increased spread. Larger area of snow, duel maxes, no big max Probably divergent camps. I’m less familiar with uk ens tendencies though since I’ve never had access to them.

Question to those who may know. Years ago the GFS suddenly popped a crazy storm at like 120 hours that no other model had. NCEP said it ingested some faulty data that caused it and they disregarded it. The next run backed of a little but still had the storm and some were arguing it wasn’t the bad day then, but someone familiar with the NWP said it would take the GFS several runs to flush the effects completely since it has some continuity between runs. I think it had to do with using some data for initialization from the previous run. Is this still true? If the GFS was off on a tangent due to some miscalculation can it take multiple runs to correct itself due to continuity between runs?

To be fair no model usually wins when it’s totally on its own. But the euro does sometimes. It just did yesterday. For one day it was totally by itself saying “nope” to any front end snow with the wave yesterday while the gfs/ggem/NAM all had 1-3” up here. Euro won. They all caved. But that’s kinda rare and I can’t remember any cases like that when the ggem or gfs were completely alone and won. Famoulsly it was showing a HECS for days around hours 100-150 in Feb 2021 but was all by itself. And some even said “it has to mean something that it’s so consistent”. Yea it was consistently wrong.

@Terpeastany good analogs showing up today?

@mitchnick did we ever get a UK ensembles update?

A Euro UK Ggem trifecta is a hill I’m willing to die on. If we have to be missing one of the 4 major global the GFS is the one I’m least upset about. I can’t remember the last time it was off on its own like this and won.

I’m not sure how resolution affects a non physics based model. But it’s been jumpy. And it’s tended to be under amplified. We leaned on it a few times this year and it let us down. It was under amplified some this week with the New England storm also.

I find it a little hard to believe a system amplified enough to put down 12-18” in Missouri is going to wash out that much given how much space there is between the detached TPV lobe and the departing vortex. The flow doesn’t look that suppressive. Thinking back to a similar wave in Jan 2021 that got squashed that way, the flow was a shred factory then compared to this.

That's a firm declaration, coming from you

Sounds about right...and probably a reasonable "max" potential for that location.

It was a good trip, but unlike Bif, all I came back with was a damn weather almanac

That was almost 100 years ago and measured at the Arboretum I think... not a runway on an island in the patomac river. lol They probably won't ever challenge that so long as they keep the official records at DCA.

The most similar evolution in some ways was Jan 96. But that cut off and dug way further south...but initially they are similar in terms of how the NS is situated, where its digging in, and where and how amplified the STJ wave ahead of it is. Then they diverge in that the 96 storm the H5 dove all the way into KY, this one comes across closer to our latitude. That might limit this storms ability to get cranking as far south as 96 did...although we don't really need that since the heavy snow extended really far south in VA in that one.

before people think you're being serious it does drop about .75 qpf across the area, which for the JMA is folks worthy. It actually only has slightly more QPF, about 1" for Boston.

That's a hard one... especially if you get stuck out in that kind of cold...things could get stiff

I still have stock left from the super bowl party

We aren't in super crazy unicorn range anymore...looking at the performance of the current models since their major upgrades, and I include my tracking of big storms for other places not just here, they don't miss major systems as often as they once did. Actually this is exactly when I would want a storm to pop up, close enough we don't have to stress through weeks of "its probably not gonna hold" territory but at just the right range where I don't start to panic why its not showing yet...if we get inside 140 without a storm showing...it probably isn't happening.

@Ji would like to talk about Dec 2000, March 01 and Boxing Day

Shit wrong storm...yay now we've brought up all 3 of our biggest busts of the last 30 years...awesome. But that storm has even less in common IMO. It was purely NS miller b, not hybrid. From 5 days out the models were wrong because they thought the STJ wave would be out in front and phase and there would be a hybrid system. Once they latched onto the idea it would be a NS only miller b it became more iffy but some runs still showed a hit because back then they liked to tease us with miller b's when in reality they almost NEVER develop fast enough, that one Feb 1996 one being the only exception I can ever remember where a pure NS miller b bombed in time to get the DC area into heavy snow. What are the odds this becomes like that? Not much imo. First of all the southern stream is way out ahead of the NS on this one so there is no mechanism to totally squash it. If the NS squashes it...there wouldn't be a storm because there is no strong NS SW to work with here. Also, models are better at day 5 then they were at day 3 back then. We don't see major errors on significant systems like that as often. Anything is "possible" but I don't see many similarities to this setup. Now can we stop bringing up every horrible fail we've had.

@stormtracker what's going on up in here...people talking about boxing day and March 2001? WTF

Before Ji starts a damn panic, I don't see any similarities to Boxing day The issue there was the northern stream wave was out ahead of the STJ wave initially and coming in much further east...so it acted as a suppressive not amplifying factor initially. Note the NS dropping down ahead of the STJ wave into the Midwest and OH valley here. Then the NS dug too much, forcing the system way down off the SE coast and squashing anything trying to come up into the TN valley Lastly the NS cut off but it did so to our south, coming in at a bad trajectory, then elongated N-S with two vort maxes rotating around ...which essentially slingshot the system up the coast but off the coast...and with the cutoff H5 right under us there was no way to get moisture transport to the west into the mid atlantic. If this fails it would have to be in a different way, because it's not that similar a progression on the guidance right now. It would take monumental changes to get that kind of thing.

Why do you hate yourself?

It was hard for me to tell, pacman ate the important pixels on my screen

Naw I'm all in on this one. That doesn't mean were all getting 20" or there is absolutely no way it could go wrong...but this one is different from all the others recently because the pattern supports this. This is what's supposed to happen. I've liked the pattern setup for this from way before any model showed anything like this. For a while I was wondering "why aren't the models showing solutions like this" given the pattern. When the pattern has major flaws I see them and point them out as reasons it might not happen, and often those flaws are. This time I am looking for reasons it will happen because the pattern is right.

I'm actually with you on this... this isn't the 90s anymore...the BIG ones dont just pop up and the whole "that's just where we want it" crap has never worked for us in the last 10 years. Around 150 hours out the models actually have done a pretty good job of getting fairly close to the right idea. That doesn't mean the details are perfect and you get the random hiccup runs and outliers you have to toss...but from 150 on in if you take the consensus of all the guidance its been pretty good at showing about what would happen with major systems.