psuhoffman

@North Balti Zen nevermind. Sorry. You have the right to feel however you want. But the odds are most years there will be a chilly week or so somewhere in early spring. It’s incredibly unlikely we get 4 straight weeks of 65 plus weather from mid March to mid April.

Let me try to explain what’s going on in my head if you’ll let me. I’m “focused” on analyzing the pattern in terms of our snow prospects. If the warmth keeps coming up in my analysis it’s because it’s what I continue to see as the biggest factor in our failures. Have I been wrong? Has it been snowing? Have I been pessimistic or just realistic? I’m not trying to only talk about the warmth but I’m also not trying to avoid anything and if warmth is the biggest factor it will continue to be my focus. Maybe this is because I did that study of every snowstorm Baltimore has had since 1950 where I looked at the surface and upper level synoptic pattern for every single one so I have this idea in my head of what the various types of setups that should result in snow here are. And when it fails I look for what the biggest culprit was not pick apart every little imperfection because almost no setups were perfect. If we only get snow when it’s perfect in every way it’s rarely gonna snow! Let me use an example from the last Gfs run to illustrate. Ya I know this is day 16 but it doesn’t matter I simply pulled this as an example and I didn’t feel like going back to find some real short range example so just pretend this is a 72 hour prog not 384. look at this… That wave is riding west to east under a high due to some temporary confidence. It’s weakening so that’s likely going to cut and end to rain. And it would have in any period. But…it should be some snow to start given that setup. But it’s not going to be. Look at the purple line. In my experience the precip north of that line should be snow. But it’s not. Except for the higher elevations it’s all rain until well north of our latitude. Why? Ok so here is where you COULD say any one of a thousand variables. *if the high was more perfectly located *if the storm took a more perfect track *if there was an injection of straight Siberian vodka cold perfectly timed I could go on and on and on and yes all those things could have made it snow. But that’s not how I see it. That exact setup has lead to a 1-3”, or more, front end snow in our area countless times in the past. Why isn’t it there? It’s just too warm! It’s that simple. I’m not interested in trying to find excuses to ignore the most obvious problem. Yea if other things were more perfect it could have overcome it, I’m not saying it can’t snow anymore. But the main reason that isn’t snow isn’t some very minor imperfection. It’s that it’s too warm and it shouldn’t be given that setup that time of year! That’s not my agenda. That’s my analysis of the situation. When I see it repeatedly being too warm unless every little thing goes perfect in a way that is just not realistic…I think it’s pointless to even waste time of those other things. Ya sure hypothetically we could create a crazy list of 10,000 things we need to all go right to overcome the warmth but that’s just not realistic. It’s just probably not gonna snow until it consistently gets colder. The main problem is it’s too warm. I’m just not interested in ignoring that just because it’s depressing.

So what maybe we get another late March snow like 2018 and oh no if we have to wait an extra few weeks to get our 6 months of guaranteed warm weather.

Right now the expansion of the warmer waters in the Indian Ocean and western PAC is encouraging the MJO to be un warm phases but I read a paper that speculated in the longer term once waters warm elsewhere the mjo could actually propagate into cold phases more. But it seems to be highly speculative and we don’t know when that would happen.

The down trend in snow is affecting places that were marginal to begin with the most. This is obvious and logical. Places that could least afford to lose any margins are the first to fall. Lower elevation ski resorts that aren’t far enough north for example. DC for example. But also the impact of warming isn’t happening uniformly. I think we’re in a worse spot because several of the impacts all have a greater effect on our location due to our low elevation and our geographic location in relation to the pacific and Atlantic. Things like the indo pac warm pool and the expanding pac Hadley cell and the warning gulf are all placing us under a prevalent ridge. Warming can also cause more snow in some places where they are still cold enough but the warning is increasing precip. Unfortunately that’s not our situation. Of course I want snow. But I’m more frustrated with people who get upset and angry at me for simply stating the obvious. It’s warmer. It’s snowing less. Those are facts. Getting mad because someone says it out loud like it’s saying Voldemort and gonna conjure it into existence is stupid. I don’t think snow will be eradicated completely in our lifetime. You just have to be smart. I think Phineas is safe where he moved next to Mount Washington. Higher elevations in New England will still get a lot of snow. Maybe in our lifetime a place like that goes from 150” avg to 120” but that’s still a lot of snow by our standards lol.

The problem is for us to resume what used to be “normal” snowfall we don’t just need to get a sub 35* winter once in a blue moon. Remember we only got 20”+ (and 20” used to be normal!!!) 60% of the time in a sub 35” winter. For the math to work out we need sub 35* winters to happen ~50% of the time like they used too. If we only get a sub 35* winter 25% of the time going forward our snow climo will be severely diminished. Short answer yes. If temps continue to warm eventually their climo will become what ours was. But I can’t predict the future. I am simply stating observations of what has already happened. Bit if you made a N American map with a “winter existed north of this line this year” by say combining stats like where was it below 36* and had at least 10”, you would see that while that line has variance each year overall the “no winter south of this” line is trending north. It’s also trending up in elevation. Lower elevation ski resorts are increasingly struggling with temps and rain. If that trend was to continue yes their fate is eventually the same as ours. Just delayed but not denied. JB would be proud.

That’s pretty much where I am. And I’m mostly at peace with it. Someday I will move. Until then I’m resigned to the reality. Im just observing the obvious here.

We've had that general longwave pattern several times in the last 7 years...it just failed to produce that much snow because it was too warm.

BTW let me preface that I enjoy the conversation, I am not trying to be antagonistic, just presenting the evidence as I see it. But before I get into the numbers...keep in mind "average" doesn't matter because average temps aren't good enough here. When your coldest avg high is 10 degrees above freezing...a season that is "average temps" is still not likely to be very snowy here. We need a below average temp season. But lets simply look at temps overall. If you go back to 1960 Baltimore has had 21 winters with more than 20" of snowfall. All but 4 of them the average winter temp was below 35 degrees. The 4 seasons with seasonal temps above 35 all had an HECS storm. In other words...the only way we can possibly overcome a season with temps above 35 and still get a lot of snow would be to get very lucky with a fluke HECS storm. 2016 was the most recent example of this. But for the most part...81% of our snowy seasons in Baltimore come with an avg winter temp of below 35 degrees. Getting a 20" snowfall season with a temp above 35 from a fluke HECS storm is a 1 in 16 year anomaly. Yes it will happen, and someday that will happen again...but we are NEVER going to get consistent snowfall that way. That is a fluke. Always has been. So what have our avg winter temps been the last 8 years... 2016: 39.4 2017: 40.5 2018: 36.4 2019: 37 2020: 40.7 2021: 37.3 2022: 39.3 and with a month to go we are near 40 for this winter. So...over the last 8 years we simply haven't been cold enough at all at any point during that stretch to have a realistic chance at a snowy winter unless we simply got lucky with a HECS. And that did happen one time during that stretch so considering that is a 1/15 shot we actually got LUCKY during this period compared to temps. We have had 1 snowy season out of the 8 when in reality based on temps we should have had NONE. This is really simple...its odds, math, probabilities and statistics. Yes within the averages we will have weeks here and there when its cold enough and once in a while you will get lucky and get some snow. But the longer term data tells us unless your season is below 35 degrees as a whole...we don't get a snowy season unless we get one huge fluke storm. And that is rare. So our path to a snowy season is simple...get temps below 35. Now that doesn't guarantee us snow. But here are the numbers since 1960. In seasons where Baltimore's winter temps are below 35 degrees we have a 61% chance of 20" of snow. In seasons where Baltimore's winter temps are above 35 its an 11% chance. From 1960 to 2015 our winter temp was below 35 degrees 50% of the time. Since we have had 8 straight years with temps above 35. That seems pretty clear to me. And the fact we have had NO SEASONS below 35 in the last 8 straight also seems to be a pretty clear reason we aren't getting much snow. This isn't complicated. It's just too warm! And it has been for 8 years running. Every single year!

@Maestrobjwa you could be right. We don't have anything conclusive yet. But I see a lot of bad signs and the longer we go without getting a sustained snowier period...not just one storm or one season, but a longer term cycle where we return to what used to be normal, the most the evidence we've permanently declined builds up.

Boston can struggle with a coastal track. They flipped to rain with January 2000. That is due to their further east coastal location. Don't get me wrong...they have WAY more win scenarios than we do, but a tucked in up the coast track can actually be one of the few situations where our area is in a better location than Boston.

You're playing devils advocate, and that is fine, but I could retort that also with this... did 2018 really work? The NAO flipped severely negative the last week of February. Then we got a perfect track rainstorm the first week of March because it was just...take a guess...to warm! The next storm trended north and hit NJ and New England. Then finally we got that 3rd storm...but we lost the first half of the storm, the WAA, to rain even with an absolutely perfect track. Yes it was late March by then but I dunno... that's kinda convenient because we had a perfect track rainstorm early in the month also and it's impossible to test how much of that was because it was March 20th or not. I am sure the result would have been better had it been a few weeks earlier, I am not arguing that...but would it have been the 20" storm it should have been with that track? I am not exaggerating the analogs to that storm were a bunch of HECS events. Dunno... maybe it still would have been muted by mixed precip some. So in a month we had one of the most prolific blocks in recent history the area got like 4-8". Yea it was March but some of the historical analogs to that month like March 58 and March 60 the area had 20" plus. So was that really a W? If we got 6" from a pattern that produced 20" in the past is that really a W for the "its not getting worse" argument?

But what is making that specific setup on the GFS "shitty"? Look at the pattern on the 12z GFS... it isn't shitty This is the setup to the storm Look at the flow over the top of our storm Y as the lead wave X slides by. That is air right off the Yukon, PC air being directly discharged into our source region for the storm. Look at the ridge along the pac coast. This isn't a pac puke pattern. There is nothing wrong with this pattern. Now as the storm crosses the MS valley...this is pretty damn good Nice PNA ridge, direct flow off the arctic, SW taking a perfect track... the only thing "shitty" about this setup is the temps. @Maestrobjwa you say we need to wait for a winter when its actually cold...when the fuck is that anymore? That happens like once every 5 years or less lately. Plus that is like saying... we can only judge if it can be cold enough when its cold enough. I am not arguing it can NEVER get cold and snow. I am arguing it is getting cold and snowing LESS. Saying "we can't judge that because its warm all the time" is kinda...well... you explain that logic to me because I don't see it.

I answered you in the other thread because that discussion could easily take us down that other path we want to avoid here.

I have no idea what storm you're referencing but I never said we can't get WAA snowfall anymore. That better not be true. But this game is about probabilities. Snowfall was never a "normal" high probability event around here. It an anomaly. But there is a difference between something being a 10-1 shot and a 100-1 shot. The right way to think about this is death by a million paper cuts. Decembers have been trending warmer and less snowy for a while...does the fact its not snowing in December recently mean we can't get snow. No. But it could mean we get less. Recently there has been a plethora of waves without any WAA snowfall associated with them. Does that mean we can't get WAA snow no, but maybe we get a little less. Recently we've had some -NAO's fail to work. Does that mean a -NAO can't work...no but maybe they work a little less. But what is the net impact on our snowfall probabilities when you start adding all those things together? If you keep losing on the margins in several different places...the margins start to add up.

maybe, that feature can be inconsistent and difficult to predict...the real issue was why did we lose the WAA to rain with a track like that. Relying on getting deformed to death is never how you want to roll.

Analyzing a 200 hour prog is silly but that's because initially its way too warm, anyone not in the higher elevations loses pretty much all the initial WAA precip to the northeast of the approaching storm to rain. Then as the coastal low passes by and the coastal plain gets into the CCB deform it finally cools...but that wrap around precip is notoriously finicky and banded and so in this case you get that weird presentation. Typically in this setup where the WAA precip was snow there would have been a more uniform snowfall presentation with some "bonus" zones within where the CCB banding sets up...but in this case that banding is almost the whole show because the more consistent WAA precip was rain.

Glass half full version: would be a nice little event, especially given this winter Glass half empty: why is a track off the coast with a perfect H5 pass in the snowiest period of our climo resulting in a mix event where DC loses half the precip to rain and is in the upper 30's until the low passes by and we get under the CCB. We lose pretty much all the WAA precip to rain.

I think the misconception that a dying nina is a good thing comes from 2 factors. Enso neutral used to be a snowier enso state a LONG time ago...it hasn't been in over 30 years abut sometimes once a narrative is established it can take a long time to change. The other issue is simple fallacy where people are looking for any hope and using the faulty logic of "nina=bad so anything else =good" when in actuality its "nina = bad, neutral = worse".

The only time I actually thought the pattern looked good was back in early December, and we did get what, on its face from a 30,000 ft view was a good pattern in mid December. This was actually the one time this year we had a longwave pattern that legit looked good. But it failed because that mean hid within it the fact that while on the whole the SER was suppressed and heights were lower in the east, in reality the SER was still able to thwart our chances because it resisted just enough each time a wave came along allowing each system during that period to cut well to our west. But that look above is a carbon copy of our "how to snow in a -PDO" analogs. But it failed, and I think some decided since that didn't work we are better off trying a different pattern. Problem is just because a really good pattern totally failed doesn't make a bad pattern more likely to work. It's actually simply depressing that we wasted a legit really good pattern. I don't think many actually think we've ever had a high probability of snow at anytime since that mid Dec pattern fail. I think some are just trying to be positive and keep hope alive. That's fine...but me personally, I would rather just accept how awful it is and face it head on and not tease myself with getting my hopes up over what are extremely long shot threats that are extremely likely to fail.

You're right that this is not acting like a canonical nina. @Terpeast noted if you look at the h5 analogs its actually behaving most like a neutral following a nina, which makes sense as the nina fades perhaps we are already into the phase where the atmosphere is behaving like a neutral. Problem is most don't realize, for whatever reason, that a enso neutral following a nina has been even worse for snow here than a nina.

Eventually we will get snow and the clowns who are constantly hyping every day 15 threat will claim victory.

Gefs has some limited support. Super long shot but at least there are a few members hinting maybe. Last few op runs that teased I didn’t even bother to say anything because there was absolutely no support. It’s still the weakest of signals and probably gone tomorrow but I figured I’d mention it. If we ever are gonna get lucky it has to start somewhere.