psuhoffman

I think you made a mistake. The 1930's was bad by that periods standards...maybe if you are using standard deviation it was the worst. But DC accumulated 182.5" in the 1930 and only 171.9" in the 2010's for instance. The biggest difference was the median though. DC had 5 years with over 20" in the 1930s and the median snowfall was 19" for that decade. DC's median snowfall for the 2010's was only 13".

We’re saved

It is but a couple near normal years surrounded by a lot of awful years makes for an awful stretch. And that 14” normal is already historically low due to the awful snowfall over the last 10-20 years and part of the deteriorating snow climo.

Another way we could simplify our struggles recently would be to break out climo down this way.... If you look at all 100+ years or records until the last 30 years or so la nina's were always pretty bad for snow, and strong east based Nino's were always pretty warm. But we got a lot of snow from both enso neutral and central/west based nino's. That gave us closer to a 50/50 spread of enso states that produced snow and ones that did not. However...recently suddenly enso neutral winters have been awful, even worse than la nina's over the last 30 years. So more recently the reality is we only have one type of one enso state that produces snow reliably. If we get a nina bad. If we get a neutral bad. If we get an east based nino bad. The deck is just very stacked against us now with less base states that have been working recently. I think a discussion we should be having is why have enso neutral winters gone from averaging 24" to 12" in the last 50 years at BWI. That is really the cause of our degraded snow climo. We lost 1/3 of our snow climo because enso neutrals used to be snowy and now they aren't.

There is variance within every pattern. But it is true that on the whole el nino's give us the highest probability of increased snowfall. But if you dig deeper the problem is its really only a specific type of nino, a west or central based one, that causes that anomaly. East based nino's tend to be warm and just as likely to be awful dud years as an enso neutral or la nina year.

His post makes no sense because we don't know yet what kind of nino it may be, if we even get one, and he fails to mention that for the southern mid atlantic (south of 40) a neutral winter is even worse than a nino. However, if you filter nino's simply by where they are centered he has some nugget of truth. Purely east based nino's where 1+2 is significantly warmer than 3-4 are pretty awful on the whole and offer us no improvement over being in a nina or neutral in terms of snow probabilities or temperatures. Basin wide nino's are ok, they tend to be warm but also tend to offer an increased chance of big snowstorms, and west based nino's are the one enso state where we have a very very high probability of cold/snow. But his post doesn't get into all that and taken the way he said it, its misleading.

You're not imagining it. It's been going on for a while now. No its not all the time every pattern every synoptic event. But in addition to there not being as prolific a frozen precip shield associated with mid latitude storms recently I've also noticed that south of 40* there is less ice between the rain/snow, if there is any snow at all that is. It seems like it used to be way more common to have the traditional Snow-sleet-freezing rain-rain transition zones and recently its just rain or wet snow south of 40* and east of the Mississippi unless at elevation.

@BristowWx @WinterWxLuvr but how is this relevant and who is even arguing with these points? Even if we had records that go back 5,000 years it wouldn't really change this discussion at all because our expectations now are determined by this generations frame of reference which is greatly impacted by the generation before (we get a lot of our norming from our parents and elders) but very little as you head further back in time beyond 2-3 generations. This is not just weather, its true of everything. Our expectations in terms of what our life will be like in most ways is based upon the recent past not 500 years ago. Plus if we did have records that went back 5000 years and we knew, oh we had a run of snow this bad a couple times before and this is just a 1 in 700 year snow drought not WORST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET (which no one is saying anyways) that doesn't make this current period any less awful, so what is the argument? Second, we do know that there were significantly warmer periods in the past. Judging by what we do know about the climate in Europe and Asia during the medieval warm period its likely this regions went 150-200 years without getting much snow at all. So lets say we are simply heading back into another cycle like that. How is that supposed to make me as a snow lover feel any better? "Oh...its ok that you're not going to get much snow for the rest of your life because it happened 1200 years ago so its normal". Thanks but I don't feel any better about that. Lastly, it's not even relevant to the discussion about our snow climo because when we say our snow climo is degrading it is implied we mean compared to what the normal during our recent frame of reference was. We are not comparing our current period to 800 years ago. We are saying our snow climo is deteriorating compared to what our expectations were calibrated to which was the normal over the most recent climate period. It is very possible we are just in a longer term cycle that operates on a scale (like 1000 years) too large to be captured by our current records. But that doesn't change whether it is getting warmer RIGHT NOW and snowing less RIGHT NOW compared to 30 or 50 years ago which is the discussion being had NOT whether its warmer or snowing less than some random period in history so long ago that no one alive today factors it into their calibration of norms and expectations. I know I am an oddball and sometimes just don't get stuff that others do...this isn't meant to be an attack, I know sometimes my posts come off that way when I don't mean them to be. I just keep seeing these points made and I honestly don't get it.

It was a bad period but not this bad

Naw do it here then someone will see 5 new pages and get excited just to find it’s a discussion about how bad things are.

That's a 15 yard taunting penalty

At least you got the solution... bitch about the bitching

I am familiar with spring skiing up there. What resort are you going to and what week of April?

See this is normal

I am concerned. It's not EVERY storm. But getting a mid latitude storm in January and February with no snowfall associated with it even to the NW of the track south of 40 degrees used to be a fairly rare thing. On average you would start to see snow show up to the NW of the track once north of about 36 degrees. But lately I have noticed a lot of storms in the last 5 years or so where they have absolutely no snow until you get north of like 40 or even 41 degrees. Again, that always happened sometimes...but it seems to be becoming a lot more common lately. That's a big problem for us obviously!

yea but it's not even one sporadic fluke thing... and not ONLY when there is a GL low and not even just here...... Where is the snow here? Where is the snow here? There have been a LOT of mid latitude waves recently where this is absolutely no, or VERY little, snow on the north side of the storm until it gets north of our latitude. That leaves no hope for us.

If we're lucky maybe we will get a perfect track and.... FUCK

This is sad

It snow's in Hawaii above 10,000 feet

The elevation at which snow would regularly occur in winter at Miami's latitude would likely be about 10,000 feet. It could sporadically snow below that and it would snow a lot more above obviously...but that is roughly the elevation where you would see snow on a regular basis in winter.

I have obviously not done any first hand research nor do I have a submarine... the clown part is how he spends years saying one thing... then when there is just no way he can possibly cling to that anymore he immediately swings to some other fringe theory and is immediately all in on that.

This is probably the last time I am wasting my time on this period. If future runs identify a tangible threat period I will start tracking that but as of now the threat of anything significant in the coming period is dead. There is still some threat of an inch or two in the area with the wave this week but that is best handled by operational and meso models at this point not ensembles so there is no point doing this anymore. 0z 1/30/23 combined ensemble bwi snow probabilities through 0z Feb 6 1": 21% 3": 4% 6": 3%

When I started really digging into what the ensembles were actually hinting at, when this was still like 12 days out, shockingly they were showing exactly what this ended up being. The reason the 1" probabilities were always way higher than the 3" even with a fairly high mean some runs was that the guidance was always saying our area had a decent chance of like 1" somewhere around here from that initial wave, but that while a few outlier members showed some huge 8" plus dump from the second wave which skewed the mean the truth was the vast majority of guidance was always a miss with wave 2. The pattern now in the short to medium range still looks exactly like it did really when it was the super long range. Pretty amazing guidance win. Sometimes the guidance is just wrong...and we always notice, so its worth pointing out when it nails something...even when its not necessarily what we want.

OMFG apparently this has been going on for a while but I just found out...JB has now fully conceded its warming BUT is blaming it on geothermal activity in the oceans, without any evidence and despite the fact the heat content of the ocean is increasing the most closest to the surface! He is getting roasted. What happened that he turned himself into a whole clown.

In the eastern US every 1000 ft of elevation equates to about 2 degrees of latitude in terms of climate. My climate at 1100 ft is closer to sea level places in southern New England. Snowshoe at 4800 ft in WV is closer to sea level at 44-45 degrees.