psuhoffman

This is similar to 2020 imo. Worse than those other years unless we pull a late save in March. I don’t think I change my style it’s just when it’s really bad my bluntness gets on peoples nerves if they are trying to hold onto hope. This same thing happened in Dec 2019 when I made that “winters over” post around Xmas and some got upset and tried arguing but the thing was I never actually said “it’s over” I simply posted the pattern and showed how every historical comp ended up horrible. They weren’t really fighting with me they were fighting history because they didn’t like what was the clear inference from the data. I will note for the record that both in 2020 and this year at times I took a period off and it was no better. The same people who were engaging with me just started fighting with someone else. The only thing that will make things better when it’s this bad is either snow or when most finally call mercy and surrender to fate usually sometime in late February

You have to know how to read them. If there is a mean of 3” over 15 days but the probability of 3” is only 25% that does not mean the ensemble is predicting 3” of snow.

There was one significant threat in March 2018 around the 15th that got suppressed before the storm we got around the 20th. Maybe that is the one that would hit this time. I think we get opportunities. We will still need some luck. Just less than what we were facing all winter until now imo.

You’ve been grounded with this imo. I wasn’t criticizing you. For me the red flag wasn’t any one model run. Which model was showing what is irrelevant. It’s that the temps were so marginal and the mean boundary location is still to our NW during the period in question meaning we need a lot of factors to all go perfectly. There is just way more fail scenarios than win in that background state.

And how often has it snowed? There are some others who are saying nothing but positive things every model run all winter no matter how bad it actually looks. They haven’t seen a long range prog they haven’t said was hopeful yet. I haven’t complained about that ridiculousness. That’s fine. But if there is room for that then there should be room for realism also imo. I do think we have a legit chance to get some snow in March, been saying that for a month now, and it wouldn’t shock me if this threat managed some snow in the northern portions of this sub, but it’s still a long shot. When a higher probability threat shows up I’ll be optimistic. I haven’t identified a discreet one yet beyond just a general window I expect for something to pop up. You know from the past I’m not a deb when I actually think it’s going to snow. I’m just not a smoke blower when I don’t.

This x1000

Been trying to prepare ppl for and thus soften the blow.

But what’s the trajectory of the rain?

Next

There is some validity to this but keep in mind an outlier solution has a way better chance of scoring a coup when it’s on the side of typical climo then when it’s showing the more anomalous scenario.

A -NAO trending towards neutral isn’t bad, especially if the numerical trend is because the blocking is retrograding west into Canada which is increasing the NAO in the east region of the NAO domain. That’s not a bad look for us.

I get what you’re saying and you’re right the Gfs and icon arrive at their solutions in a different way. But there is a common thread. The thermal boundary is too far NW. That allows the Gfs to amp up and cut and allows the Ivon to get too far NW before getting shunted east. So although I get the point you’re making I think the pessimism is also warranted because we can see how even with a more suppressed solution we can still fail because the thermals aren’t what we need.

Hey everyone the rain on the ICON isn’t as bad as the rain on the Gfs because the storm tracks on a different trajectory. Win!!!!

Going forward March is least likely to be impacted by warmer SSTs. As for the past is seems during the last -pdo March was snowier. That could be random coincidence though. Sometimes it’s just chaos since snow is a pretty random fluke thing in our region.

Agree but there is a chance. The blocking does make this more realistic than those past mirages I’ve been making fun of all winter. This one while unlikely has a legit “chance”. But the thermal boundary still just isn’t right yet. We need a lot to go perfect with wave spacing to make up for the fact the thermal boundary base state is still to our northwest. I think come mid March we will get some waves where the boundary is to our south and we have less atmospheric hostility to overcome in the snow equation.

My guess…March was historically more snowy and we simply had a bad stretch. I think it’s the law of averages evening out. As for December, the warning SSTs are likely impacting December the most of all our winter months. Ian showed a great graphic how our first snowfall is consistently moving later over the last 50 years. If the avg SSTs continue to increase we are likely losing Dec as a “winter” month.

You’re definitely the best on here now at diagnosing this. Wish @showmethesnow would still post his morning briefings. But to summarize why those details are hard to resolve and could take longer than usual to get to the final solutions, there are too many waves involved in this scenario. And the wave breaking from each impacts both the high latitude configuration and the confluence but also the wave spacing under it. It’s asking a lot of guidance to be dead on balls accurate with all these waves in close proximity but that’s what’s necessary in order to get the exact right track correct on our potential storm. I’ve never expected this to be resolved at long leads given the setup.

You’re just trying to gaslight yourself now. We’re on the southern edge of the significant snowfall (which isn’t even a huge areal coverage due to marginal temps) already. So all it will take is a minor shift to take us out of the game. Even up here I wouldn’t feel safe at all. This is a thread the needle event in either direction. It’s not like 2010 or 2016 where some huge juiced stj wave in a split flow was attacking a blocker in high with cold in place. Those had wiggle room. A change in track of 50 miles or 2-3 degrees wouldn’t have a crazy impact on the outcome. Here a relatively minor adjustment would completely sink us. But you know that and you’re just saying this so you can feel justified when you go off and tirade when the euro pulls the rug out, which you likely anticipate happening.

I still think better setups are likely to happen towards mid March. But…we are in a different regime than most of winter. Yes we had blocking in December but the mid latitude response is significantly different in December than March. A few years ago I showed how in the last 20 years we actually need the pac more so than the atl to be cold in December. That wasn’t always true and it might be a big problem in this -pdo cycle but it is what it is. So this coming blocking regime is likely to be significantly different and so not sure using persistence anymore is the best way to go.

Sure

We said this like 5 times in March 2018 before we got snow.

There hasn’t been. Low bar.

You’re worried about the DGZ on a day 7 prog?

I can currently only think of 42