psuhoffman

This is fine. But it needs to make a move when it’s around 100-150 hrs. The track usually doesn’t adjust hundreds of miles on me inside that range. Change details yea. Huge shifts less so.

Ggem perfect track rainstorm lol

It had more confluence and a much weather SS wave. Could tell really early on it wasn’t going to work. But I’d rather it be showing this than an over amped wave at this range.

Gfs might be too suppressive this run

yes very, @CAPE pointed the SS dominant nature of this period also.

The reason for that distribution is because on the coastal plain accumulations this late will be limited...its just a reality...near sea level that close to the coast it just is...and you aren't going to get the usual higher ratio area of good snow outside the heavier bands to the NW of the low either because of the time of year...even in the higher elevations you still need rates this time of year... to see big totals we needed that low tucked just a little closer to the coast. During January that woulid have shown 6-12" over a large area...from banding on the coastal plain and from higher ratios to the NW. This time of year its death band or bust.

I warned my NYC friends that it was dangerous to get excited. The duel low on both those runs should have been a red flag.

It was a delicate setup. A phase along an inverted trough is always tricky for guidance but this was especially so due to the SS wave initially dampening out and escaping leading to multiple waves and convective centers along the trough. The full capture and phase predictably happens much later than some runs indicated. I’ve liked the general setup for weeks no reason to bail now. But we need so much to go perfectly. Imo the biggest risk to the whole thing breaking down would be if the ejecting pac wave once again over amplified too soon and a ridge goes up. It shouldn’t. No really it shouldn’t. Huge epo ridge along with a still -AO/NAO in its decaying stages and a trough just off the west coast SHOULD cause the wave to slide east and amplify in the southeast. But yet there are still quite a few members in the guidance that pump a SE ridge again. It’s absolutely amazing how quickly too. I’ve brought this up a few times. There is always southerly flow ahead of any wave. But lately unless there is EXTREME confluence behind some crazy 50/50 any south flow ahead of any wave immediately pumps a huge ridge. Even when we had cold a couple times way ahead of the next wave the boundary blasts 500 miles north in one day! That’s a huge problem. I know this wouldn’t work in March but think how much snow over the years we used to get from a wave that tracked to our NW from a front end thump. Good luck ever getting that when the second any wave hits the plains the thermal boundary jumps from VA to Quebec in 12 hours. Right now that’s not written in stone and the pattern says that shouldn’t happen but it would be a fitting end to this season if it went down that way.

So let what happened to NYC remind us next time….in any NS SS phase situation never go with the most amplified solution. Especially if it’s the UK/Euro/NAM. Yes overall the euro and uk are good models but those 3 have a bias to over amp systems and are often too fast to complete a phase because of this. If the Gfs/ggem/icon are allAll significantly slower it’s a huge red flag.

Day 8 clown maps in late March are not high on my list of concerns

Just got home. It’s snowing here. It was 50 in Vermont today. Lol.

Lol

There are 3 things that would make me go more conservative for NYC metro. First their climo in the metro isn’t that good in March either NYCs biggest Mar snow since the superstorm is 8” in 2018. Before 93 you have to go back to the 60s to get double digits! One 10”+ storm in 50 years kinda indicates it’s very hard to get a huge snow into the metro this late The others are specific to this setup. It’s an inverted trough setup which means there will be more of a SE flow to the NW of the secondary than typical of this was a fully developed with its own circulation. The full phase and development of a closed circulation doesn’t happen until too late for NYC. With a marginal airmass unless they do get bombed the flip to snow could be messy. Lastly the guidance bombing them are doing it eith a meso scale moisture convergence band along the inverted trough. The guidance can’t agree on if that’s real and if so where to put it. That’s like pinning down a line of thunderstorms. Given all that I’d be conservative for the NYC area. Now the higher elevations 25 miles NW of NYC, they could get bombed depending on how quickly it comes together.

I don’t fear a 50 degree day as you do.

I heard a rumor they had come up with this nifty invention called a jacket.

If you include the handful that have a perfect track rainstorm it’s a huge signal for a storm. We just have to hope it’s cold enough. It’s close on the rain members because they indicate some mix in the area, so likely they happen during day and it’s just a few degrees too warm. But a big miller a storm signal is there.

There are multiple ways to win here. Tight wave spacing with a trailing wave. But also if the next wave were to eject from the pac in prices so it doesn’t amp too early. If the next pac wave were to eject further south that would also help. What we don’t want is a slow pac wave ejecting in one huge amplified bowling ball.

The low is closer to the 50/50 In the second image lol. We need the flow to Be Uber suppressive because every wave ejecting from the Rockies immediately pumps a crazy heat ridge in front of it then cuts north along the thermal boundary it helped push north. Go look at an 850 t anomaly loop and see how fast each pac wave creates a massive heat bubble in front of it the instant it ejects into the plains. So ya we have to root for crazy tight wave spacing. But that’s just not that realistic.

Getting a lot of snow during good years isn’t our problem. It’s being able to eek our way to 10 or 15” in warm years. Lately bad years are totally awful.

Why give up now lol

Me too but of course if it is another warm dud those that want to pretend it’s not getting warmer will say “ya but some ninos were bad in the past” and they wools be correct. No one year can prove anything. But at some point there becomes a preponderance of evidence. I am not an authority to say when that point is though.

Euro was teeing up the storm around the 22nd. Who’s with me. Lol. I wouldn’t give up totally yet. It’s messy with so many NS waves but that period is close enough to good it wouldn’t take much. We would need a flush hit at night to work thoigh.

My thermometer said it’s 99 degrees but I might have had it in the wrong place. It didn’t come with picture instructions

Naw it’s saving the New England ski season. I was worried a few weeks ago spring skiing would be shit this year. April is the best ski month. Soft snow. Warm temps. Sun. Sometimes a dump is snow tossed in. But they have to still have snow lol. Good get that snow up where it matters the ski resorts.

@Maestrobjwa sorry in advance for length but so much to this. I don’t know exactly how much our snow reality is altered yet. No doubt this year the predominant pattern was not good for us. This would have been a bad snow year in any era. We most definitely can still snow and get cold given the right circumstances. Last year it snowed a decent amount! But my concern is I think our winning combinations in the pattern lottery are decreasing. One way I think we are losing out are in marginal situations we used to need to work out for a bad year like this to be 10” and not a complete shutout. There is a reason the frequency of single digit (or worse) winters in Baltimore are skyrocketing. It’s not because great years are suddenly bad. But I do think a lot of years like this that in the past found a way to snow a few times now it’s not working. There has been a lot of comparison to a similarly hostile pac period in the 70s. And they were similar. But many of those years like 72 and 74 and 75 managed their way to like 10-15” despite a bad base state pattern. I’m not sure if we can snow anymore by getting lucky with a good track in an otherwise bad warm pattern. Lately they doesn’t seem likely anymore. Warm is just so warm now. I do wonder if the days of lucking into a fluke snow in a bad pattern are over. @Terpeast here is my even bigger concern than just losing small marginal events in warm patterns. I can live with that. But some of our biggest snow periods came from blocking patterns that didn’t have true cold to work with. I’ll use the most famous of them. Our snowiest month ever. It was “cold” south of 40 because frankly it doesn’t have to be that cold in Feb to be below avg there. But look where the actual cold is. Locked up in Siberia. Our source region is above avg. We had to work with marginal cold of a domestic source. I remember chatting with Wes about 8 days before the Feb 6 storm and he was concerned about the thermals. I said give me that track this time of year and I’ll take my chances. That equation isn’t working as much anymore! This doesn’t mean we can’t get cold and snow. A pattern like 2003/2014/2015 would be cold and snowy even now Imo. But if we lose blocking regimes that don’t have arctic air as a way to get snow we are losing a HUGE part of our snow climo! That’s my bigger fear. @Maestrobjwa I don’t know if we’ve actually lost that path or not. 2010 wasn’t that long ago. But every super Nino seems to reset the northern hemisphere mid latitudes to a new Warner base state. Was the 2016 Nino a tipping point? I don’t know. As @CAPEhas said we need to test that with another Nino. But I’ll go one step further I want to test it with a Nino like 1958/1966/1987/2010 where the pac wasn’t 100% perfect with a poleward epo pna ridge all winter dumping arctic cold into the conus. Years like that (2003/2015) I know can still work. But can a 1987 or 2010 when almost all the snow came within a couple degrees of freezing and there wasn’t arctic witnesses around most of the time. Because we can’t afford to lose those years or isolated similar storms like Feb 2006 in less awesome years but that we’re made ok by getting those marginal airbase setups up produce a big snow. Because if that no longer works then we lost like 50% or more of our snowfall climo. That was the more typical way we got snow not from arctic blasts. But I don’t know. I’m just pointing out the obvious and data. Seems you’re making your own inferences. I hope that’s not true. My guess if I had to predict is we have lost some of that but not all. But I don’t know how much. I’d like a test case season to help find out.