psuhoffman

No that’s fair. Caution with long range is prudent. But it’s not true that under amplified has been the trend for every way. We’ve also been screwed by over amplified. 2 days ago a wave went to our north! The next 2 waves after today will both be over amplified! The storm I got 6” during the eagles rams game was more amplified than models indicated. We’ve had some bad luck with storms missing us on both sides. It’s just bad luck. There hasn’t been a seasonal trend of everything being under amplified.

Ok but the result of that SER was an over amplified wave

Yea you can kinda see where the better moisture is and if that could get up here the mid level forcing could activate banding with high ratios but it won’t if there isn’t enough moisture and it’s iffy.

For northern MD and southern PA, the h7 forcing is actually over us now. But there isn’t enough moisture transport to activate the banding. If we can just get that next wave in WV to get decent deep moisture up here tonight it’s not impossible we get a decent band. But I’m skeptical. The trajectory isn’t good.

Btw this storm was only slightly more amplified at range. For like 24 hours the max snow was across MD and Southern PA. That’s a cows fart away from this end result for that range. That’s a noise level error for 8 days out! The actual failure of this week for our area was actually the second wave. If you dug into the ensembles that showed a “can’t miss” huge snow total it was from multiple waves this week. A lot of them done an initial wave going to our south. But they hit us with a second or third wave. Where they failed was not seeing that we would only be on the cold side of the boundary for one day. They had the boundary stay south of us for 4 days as wave after wave passed. What about the fact the models were under amplified on the next wave Thursday? What about the wave 3 weeks ago that hit PA and screwed DC? It’s selection bias to only count the storms that were under amplified and not the ones that ended up more.

Yea but the pattern wasn’t right for an amplified wave. I don’t care what models show at 200 hours when it doesn’t fit the pattern. That goes both ways. When they show good in a bad pattern or when they show bad in a good one. I’ll take pattern recognition over unicorn range model output.

18z GEFS is north and more amplified than 12z. Are we going to worry about over and under amplified at the same time now? Trurh is both could happen, because we are in such a good pattern look they a miss in either direction is equally likely. Or a hit. I shouldn’t tell anyone how to feel. I promised I wouldn’t do that. But imo you’re gonna drive yourself crazy stressing every op run shift in this upcoming pattern. Let’s see what things look like in a couple days as this get inside 140 hours. That’s been about when guidance starts to get a somewhat clearer picture and converge at least a bit. And that’s amazing btw. Used to be 72 hours before I’d even take general ideas seriously. As for blue wave, it seems a little suspect to use the same feature to explain both over and under amplification. I’d have to look at it more but sometimes we try to find order to chaos when it’s just chaos.

Have we? There was a one week window in early January that we had a high latitude pattern but the mid latitude trough axis was way too far east so we ended up with a progressive w-e wave. After that the pattern quickly evolved to an epo driven pattern. Those aren’t good for big snowstorms. But it’s also not uncommon in cold enso seasons for cold January patterns to be dry for NW of DC and for the later Feb into March to produce more amplified storms. 1999, 2009, 2017, 2018 all had that pattern. Didn’t work out in all of them, nothing is guaranteed. But the first in what looks like at least 3 to maybe as many as 5 or 6 wave opportunities is still over a week away. What happened today they suddenly everyone is having a panic attack?

Dude weren’t you posting 12 hours ago about some stuff blue wave said about it being too warm and storms cutting and now your sure it’s gonna be too cold and south of us. You full tilt man.

It’s still too far out to be worrying about op runs every 6 hours. It’s also possible this wave does get suppressed and we wait for the next one. Blocking is needed to keep an amped up wave (which is necessary for a big storm) from cutting but it means a weaker wave will get squashed. It gives us a higher ceiling but yes it can be dry. But this kind of progression also gives us multiple shots and often a hit comes later in the cycle as the block dies and the flow relaxes.

I see it with the stuff down by DC but that has no chance of getting north of 70. I’m looking at the northern edge of legit snow that runs from Martinsbirg WV to Westminster MD right now. That’s been sinking southeast and I see no indication it will press north. Radar marches those HRRR runs that had very little up here. The models they gave this area 2-4” show that northern edge being 20 miles further north and not sinking south right now.

We know what Feb 19-26 looks like on the eps. week 3 on the weeklies week 4 that takes us to March 14 and the pattern breaks down after. we get 3 solid weeks of a very favorable pattern to end winter.

I’m already outside the snow completely. So slowing or backfill won’t even help I’d need it to press back north and not seeing any indication of that. I kinda had a sinking feeling the last 24 hours how this was headed though so this isn’t the gut punch it could have been. I’ve seen these west to east waves enough to know this trajectory is bad for the northern fringe areas.

serious question…it started to snow pretty good for 15 mins then it sunk south and is just snizzle again. Looking at radar I don’t see anything pushing north at all to my west and the band here is sinking south. So was that it? Is there a chance that 15 min of snow was the whole deal up here? BTW ya I know this isn’t supposed to be big up here but they are still predicting 2-3” not 2-3 mm.

Yes. NYC is suffering from the same snow hole you are.

Looks great for DC area. Very worried even my modest expectations are in trouble for up here. It just started snowing but the radar looks like the moisture is sinking south in northern MD and about to get shunted before it even gets going up here.

I was trolling in banter about wanting to miss snow north not south. That was mostly trolling, although because I ski I prefer it to snow north not south and I can snow chase north but I’m not chasing south where 6” becomes an apocalypse. But there was a kernel of truth, if you live southeast of the fall line you know what time it is. I used to work with someone who liked snow but lived right on the bay near middle river. He complained every time he got 1” and others got 5”. I used to tell him you can move 20 miles, have the same commute, and get way more snow and he never took it seriously. So why should I fret when climo got him when he didn’t care enough to be on the correct side of the fall line. We live in a free country. You can live where you want. If you choose to live a place that averages 15” of snow you can’t complain when a place that averages 25” gets more. I have way more sympathy when someone gets screwed by bad luck when one of these progressive waves goes north or south of them. But when climo does exactly what climo does on a classic east coast storm that’s just what’s supposed to happen.

I got about that near IAD. True SE of 95 didn’t get much but that’s common in amplified coastals unfortunately. I mean even people west of the fall like were kinda meh about that storm when it comes up in discussions. Not sure if it’s because it was an awful year otherwise or they are mad Philly NE got double what we did.

Feb 6 1995 is showing up in the analogs a lot. That was an underrated storm imo. Ya the hecs level snow was northeast of us but we got 6-10” across our area and it was mostly in a 6 hour period with thunder snow. I never understood why so many acted like that was some letdown just because places that get more snow than us got more snow than us.

Before everyone goes nut's 9/10 times that won't lead to a triple phased super storm...you also need to get the arctic jet to fully dive in and phase and that's the tricky part...but its a loaded look for sure. And then at the very end its reloading the ridging near Greenland again.

Think full latitude negatively tilted trough from the Arctic to Florida

no not close in a bad way

Unfortunately 90% of what I do now is data and budgets and progress monitoring which isn't my favorite, I miss teaching but this is way better for my kids, flexible hours and days and more pay, but I can sit here and toggle between my spreadsheets and weather lol

someone else see Feb 25 on the GEFS...I don't want to be the one to say it...what that is way too close to in terms of a setup