psuhoffman

2015. I got 13” from it. I think DC area got like 4-8”

I have no doubts that a Nino still gives us better odds. 2019 while disappointing was still the snowiest winter across our region as a whole of this 7 year dreg period! But…my fear is that if we do remain in a longer term -pdo that the impact of ninos might be muted some. Not totally. But if you look at the h5 from 2019 it matches the mean h5 from ninos during a -pdo cycle. Often during a -pdo a nino muted the pacific ridge but cannot eradicate it to produce what we consider the canonical nino split flow STJ dominant pattern. Ninos were still pretty good during the last -pdo predominantly because mjo phase 8-1 which they favor also promotes blocking. With blocking we won a lot with a more NS dominant nino pattern back then when the mid latitudes were simply colder. I have my doubts how that might work now. It would obviously be better. But maybe not as much better as we expect. There were some more canonical ninos during the last -pdo. 1958 was one. So we still could get lucky with one of those. But there were more like 2019 than 2003/2010/2015 or even 2016. And again even a not as good Nino is better than what we’ve been getting so I’ll take it. Just not sure “Nino” is the panacea for all that ails us. But even if ninos are still awesome and we get 50” next year…I still don’t see that as the solution to what I’m upset about. We aren’t going to suddenly get ninos 50% of the time! Ya it’s good if 1-2 times a decade we get a huge anomalous snowy year from a Nino, but what about the rest of the time? What I’m lamenting is that it seems like getting snow in an enso neutral or Nina is becoming REALLY hard. Like as if we suddenly all moved to Richmond hard! Those 1-2 huge years a decade are great but it was easier to tolerate that equation when the other 80% of the time we were still averaging a decent amount of snow and the even getting a random 1979/1982/1996/2000/2014 big non Nino season in there. I’m not ok with getting 1-2 snowy winters a decade of the other 8 years are like they’ve been lately

Well before it was too warm and the pattern was bad so storms were tracking 500 miles north of us. Now the pattern is great, storms are tracking where we want but it’s just too warm.

But ur trended warmer too. Overall it was a net negative.

It’s been a long year

That rarely actually works in the grand sense. It might lead to one or two lucky hits but we are never getting a HECS or a 30”+ winter that way and those are what I root for.

Dunno man, it was a -2.5 std dv block just 3 days ago. And that is what set off the pattern change. Yea it’s slowly fading now and will be waxing and waning bit slowly dissipating overall for the next 2 weeks. But that’s normal. A block is rarely going to maintain a crazy standard deviation for that long. It is an anomaly. The heat bubble that is the block is usually going to cool and weaken over time after the wave break or SSW that creates it wanes. If we need a 3 std block to maintain itself for weeks on end to get snow…. Again this is a matter of degrees. Yea if the block was some historic anomaly it maybe could bully things more in our favor. But we’ve snowed in the past with much less. I really don’t get it. We keep failing in different ways in looks that I know from experience are historically pretty good and the only common thread is one thing…it’s too warm. But everyone else is like “no it’s cause the high was 20 Miles too far north, then the trough axis wasn’t perfect, then it’s cause there want some cross polar arctic blast, then we didn’t have some -20 stdv block”. I mean come on.

I was exaggerating but the reason there is no blue on many long range seasonal products is they can’t decide where to put the cold and because it’s outnumbered in areal coverage like 60/40 or worse all the blue gets eliminated when the smoothing happens. In reality there will be some blue somewhere. But it’s also still indicative of how the odds are increasingly stacked against us. I’m not arguing it can’t snow anymore. I know it can and will.

It is why the wave tracks under us. The block X displaced Y which causes the wave to dig instead of lift like every other pac wave. But a HL ridge can’t make the airmass under it any colder.

It doesn’t matter what longwave pattern we get when there is no cold air anywhere!!! But please tell me again how it’s the exact location of the high that’s the problem.

I wasn’t comparing this to 58. I was pointing out 58 was highly flawed with a primary near Chicago, an h5 track through PA, and no arctic air. And we got snow! Yea the high isn’t perfect. Yea the phase isn’t ideal. But a 985 low tracks just east of OC and most get no snow at all. When I examined every 4”+ snow at BWI years ago almost none were perfect. Only the crazy 1996 type storms had everything textbook right. And even some pretty damn big storms didn’t. But a flaw or two used to mean we get 3-6” instead of 12”+. So I roll my eyes when we go wave after wave with no snow at all and somehow each time it’s this one thing or that one thing. It didn’t used to be that hard to get some snow!

Actually there is kinda warm. But it’s north of the boundaries where it should be kinda cold. Lol.

No there was a true arctic airmass from an epo ridge…yes it was very warm south of the boundary before the storm started but that’s just true all the time now. There is no kimda warm. It’s a torch south of every boundary lately. And DC never got that cold because it never got far into the airmass But the reason that had such a sharp cutoff north was the dry arctic air pressing down on wave.

Kinda negative given todays 12z was the highest probability of 1” at BWI all winter. 78% using my combined formula.

The pattern is real. I never hyped wave 1. Said it’s starting too far north. But it did get suppressed to the point it secondaries to our south. But with no cold the primary starting out to our NW is no good unless it bombs. The next wave takes a pretty good track. Just not cold enough. The pattern matches our best march snows! Imo the pattern hasn’t failed. It’s exactly what we hoped. Do I expect there to be more threats with good track systems between March 17-25 yes. Do I have any confidence they end up snow? No. Frankly I’m not confident we can snow easily in any pattern that requires a N Amer domestic airmass to be cold enough. I’ve seen no evidence of it lately. Has anyone else? When was the last time a storm worked with a marginal domestic airmass with no cross polar arctic flow without it being an absolute qpf bomb like 2016? I seriously can’t remember the last time DC got like 4” of snow from some wave that tracked south of them in a typical domestic airmass. I can list dozens from the past but can’t think of any in a long long time.

@NorthArlington101 my two dates (before and after the 20th) show on eps. Threat for 18-19th Threat for 22-23 Both feature a perfect longwave configuration. West based -NAO, 50/50, trough digging to our west and SS dominant. Probably won’t be cold enough but that’s another issue unrelated to the pattern.

As expected the best snow signal for the coastal plain is centered on March 18th.

My wave 3 looks good on the euro at least.

I really don’t want to go down this path anymore, we still have hope we can do this later…but if we did get a 58 repeat today it would probably fail and people would say “but the h5 track was to our north and the primary got to Chicago and there was no epo help so the airmass was too warm” not realizing 58 overcame all that AND we use to snow in flawed setups all the time. Probably 80% of all those storms I case studied had some flaw. That’s why I go mad when we have one decent setup after another fail during our least snowy period ever and each time someone picks apart that flaw that will invariably be there in any storm as the reason it didn’t snow as if we are Atlanta and should need every single thing to be 100% perfect to snow.

But most of those big March snow analogs were from the 50's and 60's...its legitimate to wonder if those same patterns would produce the same results now.

The only way for it to work given what is now the obvious characteristics of the airmass is for what happens up off NYC to happen 150 miles further south. If the storm were to bomb off the VA capes and stall near OC it would dynamically cool the DC area enough to get some snow in the CCB. Whether that can realistically happen...its a rather large ask but not impossible given the blocking in this situation. But we need the most extreme solution to happen and we know from experience that is not where you want to be.

This is different...the fact there is snow in the vicinity...and the low isn't 300 miles NW of us...is the pattern change. The fact its too warm is NOT specific to this pattern, that has been a problem a LOT in a lot of patterns over the last 8 years or so...yes I am including 2016 because there was one absolutely perfect track rainstorm that year in Feb also...I got 8" of slop up here but it should have been a 6-10" snowstorm for everyone given the track and time of year but the boundary temps were just too warm. If this fails to produce the amount of snow we want it isn't the pattern failing...the temp fail is not specific to this pattern.

Yea...this is the GFS for Friday night now This is what it showed when it was still 7 days away...

We might just have to respectfully disagree on this one. Is the "block" the strongest block ever no. But its legit, its not just a heat bubble that originated from the mid latitudes like we've seen a lot lately. It originated from an east based block that retrograded and will slowly degrade. That's actually the best progression usually. As for the progressive nature, its not a split flow nino pattern no. But the pattern is blocky imo. Two straight waves are going to stall along the east coast and amplify and spin for 2 days before being forced east under the flow. Given how far north this first wave started without a blocked flow it would cut to Hudson Bay. Lastly... more cold added to the equation both forces everything south some AND amplifies that scenario. More cold increases the baroclinic energy and we get a more amplified solution. Short of this being a split flow nino pattern the only thing I think that is missing from making this better is colder air. If there was a colder airmass I bet you one of these waves coming up would bomb out where we need. But that is just my opinion and there is no way to prove that.

Models were way over amplified out west just a few days ago. Probably will correct again given the pattern over the top.