psuhoffman

Lol I’ve been trying so hard the last couple days not to poop in this thread but I’ve been getting a chuckle thinking how since Xmas it been “ by Jan 10” then Jan 15 and 20 and 25 then 28th then Feb 1 now Feb 6. The same look has been stuck at day 10-15 for a month now.

1/23: 1.7” total: I feel like this row is just mocking me

No one can say the future. But why don't you simply use objective evidence about the recent past to make your determinations. Frankly even before this recent god awful run you were unhappy most of the time. So even in our best of times our climo wasn't really good enough to satisfy you. If snow is as important to your mental health as it seems to be...you really should move. If you cannot change your attachment to snow and you continue to live in a place it doesn't snow much you will continue to be miserable most of the time.

We can't know yet. I am not sure how much of this is AGW. There might be other cyclical things going on, I suspect there are, but again what does it matter? Lets say for a second that the Indo-Pac warm pool is NOT related to AGW, and its some long term hundreds of years cycle that we just don't know about because we don't have records going back far enough to capture it... and lets say the same about the expanding Pac Hadley cell. We know the PDO is a cyclical 30-40 year cycle so then add in that. So lets say this new horrible snow climo is a result of mostly 3 factors that are not related to AGW...that doesn't make my arguments or fears any less correct, that our snow climo has severely degraded. I have never made this about AGW. I accept the reality that it is getting warmer, thermometers and all that jazz, but I have not made this a AGW or man has made us not snow anymore thing. I am simply focused on why are we in the absolute worst stretch of snowfall in the history of records in our area. What is the cause. Maybe its AGW. Maybe its all cyclical. Maybe its a combo. Whatever. But the reality is its snowing less now than in any previous period of record...and its starting to become a long enough period of time its getting harder to dismiss as just a temporary thing. I don't mean temporary as in FOREVER but temporary as in its likely to just flip all the way back to historical norms very soon.

Don't get me wrong...its a better pattern simply because there is enough cold around. But it's not actually a "historically snowy" looking pattern. I think that because recently we have failed completely due to temps people have begun looking for "cold" as if that means "snowy". But historically those are very different things. Until recently we failed due to dry just as often as warm. There are plenty of "cold" periods that had little to no snow through history. I don't think we are necessarily more likely to snow just because its cold now...its just warm so damn much of the time that warm has become the bigger problem. But rooting for a cold/dry pattern or more accurately a "colder" pattern but one that is likely to warm up before any storm...isn't really the answer. @CAPE I agree that we need cold to snow...I mean that's not a revelation. So doing something to get a colder profile is necessary. If we are to accept to get cold enough to snow we NEED an EPO induced arctic airmass then yes I guess we must root for that first. But there is a reason the EPO has absolutely no correlation to our snow. It's because through history we have been able to snow without needing EPO induced arctic air. In short if it's true we can't get cold enough without an arctic airmass anymore were fucked. Because that means you're now stacking one more variable on top of what we already needed to get snow, which even before was anomalous, we were never a very snowy climate. And on top of that, the variable you are stacking is one that actually correlates to a very bad longwave configuration to get a favorable storm track. A big EPO ridge is actually NOT the right jet configuration to get an east coast snowstorm. So now...the implication is we first need a big EPO ridge, then let the cold get into the CONUS...then we need to root for a pattern change AFTER that to the right longwave jet configuration right after the EPO and before the cold gets obliterated by the pac again. Ya ok...if that's true then that right there is why its never snowing anymore in general the last 7 years. lol The reason many are rooting for this upcoming pattern IMO is simply because patterns that SHOULD SNOW have been failing lately. We are in a predominant -PDO pattern. If you look back at the last -PDO period from 1945 to 1980 the way we got snow was mostly through a -NAO overcoming the -PNA. Look at a comp I put together of Baltimore 6" snowstorms during the last -PDO period with a -PNA. This is the look we want. The most obvious feature there is the west based blocking which causes the mid latitude response necessary to overcome the -PNA. No the NAO wont stop a -PNA in a -PDO regime. But in the past what a -NAO did was cause a full latitude trough across the mid latitudes UNDER the blocking so the PNA didn't matter so much. But lately that has been failing. Look at the last few -NAO periods... 3 of the last 4 NAO blocks instead of forcing a trough under the SE ridge linked up and created a full latitude ridge instead. That is NOT the typical response during a -PNA/PDO regime. If that was true it would have never snowed from 1945-1980. The other, the winter of 2021 was the most egregious and most alarming. Look at that H5 for the winter. Keep in mind the composite I showed from earlier snows was using current climo skewing the means. There was a colder base state then so that 2021 mean is almost identical if you adjust for that. The ridges and troughs are in the same spots. But it didnt do DC and Baltimore any good. It was simply too warm. We had like 6 perfect track storms that winter and it was just mostly rain everytime along 95. It was barely cold enough to be snow up here! Even this winter's pattern so far is closer to what historically is a "snowy" look than the one coming up. Again... That right there is NOT a shut out shit the blinds no hope torch look. If you showed us that back in October and said that would be the pattern from Dec 1 to Jan 15 I would not have said uh oh were in deep trouble. That is a decent look. But we were torching so everyone is acting like its been a bad pattern and we need something else...but the coming "colder' EPO pattern is actually historically a lower odds of snow look than the one we just have had. The fact it was too warm in what should have been a decent pattern doesn't mean a cold but historically bad for snow one is more likely to be any better. It might be slightly better ONLY because the better pattern turned out to be a torch but a -EPO +NAO is NEVER going to bring us to the holy land of a truly snowy period. The best we will ever do is what we have been doing the last 7 years which is luck our way to table scraps once every LOOOONG while if we can't snow from blocking without arctic air anymore. @WxUSAF You brought up the PDO the other day so I did some numbers. And this is scary. The last -PDO lasted from 1945 to 1980 where the PDO was negative 80% of the time during winter. Then from 1981 to 2019 the PDO was + 73% of the time during winter. If we have just entered another -PDO cycle its likely to last the rest of our lives. But looking back at 1945-1980 we were able to overcome it much of the time. But I found some scary numbers to indicate things might have been degrading much earlier than we knew but the +PDO was covering it up. From 1945-1980 we had 29 seasons with a predominant -PDO during which 52% still featured a 6" snow day at BWI. In other words more than half the time we were able to overcome the unfavorable pacific and still get at least one big snowstorm. But from 1980 to 2019 we had 12 seasons with a predominant -PDO and in all those years there were just 2 6" snow days at BWI. So we only were able to get a big snowstorm 17% of the time since 1980 during a -PDO while before 1980 we got a big snowstorm 52% of the time during a -PDO. So....was our climo degrading much earlier than we even knew its just the favorable PDO was covering it up for a time? If we can only get a snowstorm 17% of the time in a -PDO and we are heading into a LONG period where we will be in a -PDO 80% of the time...that math is REALLY UGLY.

We obviously just need a 1060 high! My book is full so fuck it.

My “gloom” was analysis of what happens after. Feb 1-5 or so holds some potential. But it looks like it deteriorates into another crap pattern pretty quick. That gives us 1-2 wave opportunities perhaps. You know how our luck seems to go with any one wave. And the pattern is good not great. Usually to hit with a one and done we need a REALLY good window. I was hopeful to get either a better short term window (some blocking perhaps) or a longer lived favorable window at some point. We very much can score a hit in the Feb 1-5 period. But if we don’t it could get real ugly. That’s where I was coming from.

That only shows half the story...if you also show the decreasing probabilities for 20" on the "high end" of the range you start to see that there is definitely a trend from 100 years ago. Now your point that we don't know what might have happened BEFORE about 150 years ago, although we have enough colonial period accounts to say even without daily records that snowfall was probably pretty high through the 1700s and 1800s in our area, but yea before that we know about nothing. We can say based on what we know from Europe there was likely a warm period before that. It is very possible that if you want to judge things on like a 1000 time period, or even the whole period since the last ice age we were in a colder period and this warmer isn't that unusually on a very long timescale. But isn't all that irrelevant? We don't live on that kind of timescale. Humans lifespan dictates how we judge norms. This is true of everything. No one cares what prices were 100 years ago that no longer the "norm". No one cares that human life expectancy was like 30 for most of history...that isn't what we expect now. Even if we had records that went back 1000 years our expectations would probably still be set based on more recent records not what happened in 1450. No one is alive who set their expectations based on that weather. My main point is much of our pattern analysis and expectation wrt snowfall is based on the norms of the last 100 years. When we see some "look" on the day 15 ensembles and our experts opine about the snowfall potential, that is based on how that same look produced results in the recent past. So if that is changing it is very pertinent. It doesn't matter what was happening 500 years ago since that isn't what our expectations are based on.

Yea I don't agree with the "rosy" assessment of that day 15 look. First of all its a long range mean...if the anomalies end up where they are...as the outliers fall off the SE ridge and associated warmth will become even more extreme. We've seen this over and over and over and over and over again. Additionally, not all "near normal" anomalies are the same. If this was a blocking pattern I would be thrilled to see neutral anomalies. But in a pattern where the cold is centered to our north and there is a hostile Atlantic, we actually need to see the cold boundary well to our south. Because any wave will push the boundary north. In general in that pattern precipitation events will likely happen and the warmest point of the pattern. So a smoothed temperature mean at that range where timing differences on waves from each run of an ensemble will vary....we need to see the boundary well south...otherwise what we are seeing is that we might get chilly for a day or two behind waves...but will likely warm up before the next. I think that day 15 look is pretty much garbage. The best thing I can say about it is its day 15 and will likely be wrong in some way...just pray it changes in a better direction not worse, because that look there is unlikely to produce a snowstorm here imo. I still agree with most that our best window looks to be in early Feb for a short period. Unfortunately its pretty much just a transition not a long lasting pattern so we likely get 1-2 wave chances then its back to shit the blinds. As the TPV gets displaced it sets up a relatively short window of opportunity where the SER could be suppressed enough. What we REALLY need is for the waves on the front end of that process to come across in pieces and not amplified. Our best shot is likely as the cold boundary presses if we can get some waves along it. If the cold blasts through behind an amplified phased wave we are likely toast as it will suppress everything and then our only hope is to pray we get a weak wave on the backside of the cold. It would have to be weak though since by the time the TPV is exiting east we resume a pretty awful longwave pattern and anything even slightly amplified will just cut way west again.

Except a -EPO, -PNA, +NAO is a really really really bad correlation to snow. The EPO alone actually has absolutely no correlation to snow beyond noise. A -EPO +PNA combo has "some" correlation to snow. A -EPO/+PNA/-NAO has a very high correlation...but get this...a +EPO/+PNA/-NAO has an even higher correlation to snow. In short...a -EPO as taken as an individual pattern driver has the lowest correlation to snow of all the major global indicators we look at (EPO/PNA/AO/NAO). And a -EPO with a bad atlantic actually is usually a total fail cold dry warm wet pattern.

How to get a SER despite a displaced PV trapped under a ridge bridge!

I found the front cover for my book

It’s Feb before DC and Balt get any snow and it’s “rushing” things. God help us if it ever takes it’s time.

There are still other major issues. And it’s possible “fixing” the temps if it required bastardizing other sound equations to do it, was a net negative. I’d rather a known bias than a wildly inconsistent and inaccurate mess.

It was and it largely worked which is why the Gfs doesn’t tease blue every run anymore.

We have a favorable pac already. Problem is cold takes a while lately to build. So we wait. But also an epo alone won’t do it. We need some other mechanism. Either AO or -NAO help or a TPV displacement that can serve as a proxy. We got the tPV help in 2015 for example. We got some AO help in 2014. I highly doubt, at least until later Feb, we get NAO help. But we might get a tpv displacement. The holy grail save would be if we get a tpv displacement early Feb then roll into a -NAO after it lifts and with a cold regime established. That’s the way we could pull a rabbit from a hat here.

The last 2 times a TPV displacement teased then failed us it fell apart around day 7-8. The initial TPV split happens tomorrow. That’s a lock. But what really does the trick for us is around day 7 as the tpv attempts to consolidate the wave breaking from the EPO and WAR splits it a second time! That weakens it enough to allow it to be bullied south. If that fails this all falls apart again. I’m about 24 hours from feeling confident it’s real. Guidance has been remarkably good inside 7 days with key features. If the big 3 hold through 0z Wed I think we can start worrying about specifics not whether the whole pattern fails. Then of course we worry about the details we still would need luck with.

There are 2 factors to watch. Guidance is bad at accurately predicting both. The first is where the best area of WAA precip sets to north of the warm front. Often this is where the best mid level SW flow meets adequate cold air resistance. This will be that streak of precip that breaks out from WSE to ENE north of the boundary ahead of the storm. We know the drill…if that’s aimed north of us it’s game over. But guidance isn’t good at placing that until inside 24 hours. The second is the intensity of the banding inside that feature. If you get heavy enough precip it can hold off the WAA a bit longer by mixing the column d also because the inflow created by the banding can create a bit of a northerly flow and temporarily resist the larger southerly flow. This combo can cause a good bust where 1-2” becomes 3-5” quick. Hard to ever really predict that though. Kinda just happens usually. But first we need factor 1 to go our way to have a shot at 2.

I missed some meetings. Something really important came up.

You could probably add 12-15” to the seasonal avg. It wouldn’t have the same impact as Deep Creek because there are too many ridges to the west to get a ton of upslope but it would add 1-3” to each event. Might have a bit more impact than Catoctin because we get more precip here from coastals.

Same here. It was 33 during most of the snow. The valley below me, where @HighStakes is, has visibly less. 1100 to 800 feet made a difference. Similar to a Dec 2020 storm where I got 3” and in the valley just a coating. My house before I left. A half mile away in the valley

Tapering off now. 1.75” on the deck

2nd game in Dallas was without Hurts, Eagles turned the ball over 4 times which is very uncharacteristic of them, and they were missing Lane Johnson and their slot corner and safety who is also a great slot and slides over usually when Maddox is out. Dallas took advantage of that and kept hitting the TE and slot WR v a scrub. Objectively you take away just 1 or 2 of those Gardener turnovers, inject a healthy Hurts, Lane, and CJGJ and put the game in Philly…. I think Philly is a better team. Not saying Dallas couldn’t win. If the eagles have a bad day and Dallas has a good day it can happen but Dallas doesn’t scare me. SF is an unknown. They have looked really good but mostly v unimpressive competition. They haven’t beaten any of the elite teams either. They did play KC this year but got smoked. Had they beat Dallas like a red headed step child I might wonder if they really are next level. But they looked very much on the same level as Dallas today. Dak was god awful. He has a better game and Dallas could have won.

I’m just glad SF is struggling with Dallas. I know the eagles are better than Dallas and would handle them pretty easily at home but I wasn’t sure about SF. Seeing them struggle and look pretty ugly at home v Dallas makes me feel a lot better.

Both are warm weather teams so not in this game but the fact they are both here is another page in by book.