psuhoffman

If you loop the last 48 hours on the gefs and geps you can see positive progress happening.

If the pac jet relaxes just a bit it would solve pretty much all the problems. Those other imperfections wouldn’t matter much if you retrograde everything out west 5-10 degrees.

I don’t think the end of the EPS was that bad. I thought it took a step finally. I’ll be interested in what the weeklies show as its extension today, just for fun lol. ideally we want a -nao and to get that pac trough to retro a bit to get that ridge (x) back closer to an axis along Idaho. But this is closer. The highest heights are no longer right on top of us. Yea there is no arctic air but that’s par for a Nino. Look at the flow. The Canada ridge is pulling back enough to get a flow we can work with. I could see something working within that framework. It’s not as bad as the last few runs imo.

We had a perfect track rainstorm in Jan 2016 a couple weeks before…ya know. We also had a perfect track rainstorm in early March 2018 then a couple weeks later…so it’s not the worst thing. It’s more indicative of the storm track with the stj we just need a period that’s cold enough. Are you ready for my detailed deeply analytical thorough answer…. YES

I let the kids play outside this morning since school was delayed. Snow cover still holding strong.

This is good analysis to do. In the end a compromise seems to have been best. The 10-1 were a bit high even here. Some runs were close but others had me at 5+. But as I expected the depth maps were low for places that did get banding. If it snows hard marginal air/ground temps can be overcome. We’ve seen this time and again. Kuchera I think was the closest of the pre made clown maps. Overall the euro did really well with this one imo.

Low sun angle but also…the clouds we get up here from a NW flow off the Great Lakes helps a lot. Those clouds tend to dissipate just SE of us where the elevation drops and it makes a big difference.

This was another case where there was a visible difference between my house and Ebb Valley when I dropped the kids off. Not as pronounced as Dec 2020 when I had 3” up here and only a coating down there but it was about 1” difference. ~250 ft additional elevation makes a difference in these super marginal events.

I’ll run the numbers later. Going back to sleep for a couple hours.

4am update 32 degrees still light to moderate snow. Had just under 4”

Grass starting to cave

It’s coming down pretty good now.

Down to 33, just need rates to pick up. Precip is too light.

34 all snow

I look down on him…literally. He is like 200 feet below me in the valley between my ridge and the town proper of Manchester which is also kind of on a ridge.

You type a lot in your sleep

32 on top of cotoctin now. That’s the place to be for this one.

There is some slushy flakes mixed in but it’s not coming down that hard. If it was it would flip to snow.

I couldn’t be sure so I pulled the car out to see on the windshield, can confirm there are some slush bombs mixed in. Change over seems eminent.

Down to 36

The reason for the sight downtrend this afternoon was a slight change in the evolution of the system. Earlier runs had focused more on a trailing band that comes through around 3-5am. More recent runs are keying more on a band ahead of that which comes through between 11pm and 1am west to east. The problem is that’s too soon. Boundary layer is still torched. So less precip is falling towards the end when it’s actually cold enough.

down to 43 here now.

On the HRRR it’s partly because it’s bringing in the best banding earlier before it gets cold enough to do much good.

Just to clarify 1) all the week3+ extended guidance still looks great. 2) I still expect it to eventually be correct. I think it was just too fast getting there initially and felt that might be true even a week ago. 3)but I am acknowledging that for about 7 days now the better looks are stuck at day 16-20 just outside the actual ensemble range mostly. At times it’s snuck into day 15 for a run then retreated. And that’s frustrating. Just noting that observation.

I think our definition of wall to wall winter is different. I don’t mean it snows the whole winter. But to me I was thinking a majority (not all) of the winter is spent in a pattern where it can snow and there are multiple events spread out. Not just one or two flukes. 2008-10 was definitely a wall to wall winter for me. Snow events in our area (not everyone’s yard gets it every time!) Dec 5, Dec 10, Dec 19! A clipper early Jan. Another storm late Jan. 3 snows Feb 2-10th. A light snow for MD in late Feb and a near miss in early March. That’s as wall to wall as it’s gets to be. No 3 week shut the blinds periods…we were tracking legit threats from Dec 1 on! And is even throw in years where it started warm and flipped but then had a sustained 8 weeks or so of cold/snow. For reference years I would categorize as wall to wall winters in my adult life 1994, 1996, 2003, 2010, 2014 Years that just missed but were close, had long stretches that felt like winter and I’d even include in this argument 2005, 2015 But let’s be serious…a lot of us are hunting for the big year that historically this area gets with decadal regularity. 1958, 1961, 1964, 1966, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1987, 1996, 2003, 2010, 2014. Those years features a combo of long stretches of wintry weather and snows. We all know they won’t happen most years, but my point was if this enso can’t being about a snowy (doesn’t even have to be to the level of one of those years) winter then I don’t know if getting a year like that is even possible in the current pacific background base state.