psuhoffman

It helps me that April has spring break to plan, and I love spring skiing season in New England so often I am occupied planning multiple weekend trips up to Sugarbush or Sugarloaf to get some last turns in. April skiing up there can be awesome.

I haven't given up on salvaging some snow this winter. I do think we might get an opportunity next week. A week of straight flow off the arctic will establish a colder regime. But as I said yesterday its still disappointing that even with runs that have a severely displaced PV in a really good location with a week of straight polar flow...it still seems like the boundary want's to set up pretty far north. The cold just isn't that impressive given the longwave pattern and not expansive enough for our latitude on the majority of runs. But its close enough that it wouldn't shock me if we get a wave to work in that period. After that it's probably back to torch no hope for a while. We have so much working against us in Feb. The MJO is heading towards hostile territory. And while the good phases have not helped us much recently...the warm phases always seem to kill us. Its a negative correlation only. Nina feb climo in a +QBO is pretty god awful. I know some are referencing the dying nina but if you look at years with a fading weak nina heading towards neutral in Feb the climo isn't any better. Almost everytime we have a nina that might fade I see this "its fading by late winter" being tossed around but frankly there is absolutely no data or objective evidence suggesting a fading nina to neutral during winter is good. The Feb/Mar analogs are actually WORSE. Sometimes they turn around in March, almost never in Feb, but actually slightly MORE nina's that were strong all winter had a March turn around than the weakening ones. That is because some of the nina tropical forcing that is awful during early and mid winter actually becomes somewhat favorable in March. Here are the Feb analogs to a weakening Nina heading to neutral enso over the last 30 years. March is a wild card. Is the PV takes a hit it does increase chances for blocking and in March blocking still seems to be impactful. It seems early in the season to even mid season blocking just doesn't have much impact anymore, at least not enough to bully other factors anymore...but Feb and Mar it still can. So if we can get blocking in March maybe we salvage a period of opportunity. Similar to 2018.

I can relate... yes I like snow whenever and I will track anything anytime, BUT... getting snow in March in an otherwise awful season is kinda like when your favorite team wins a game in an otherwise crappy season. Yea you can enjoy that one game and cheer when they score...but at the end of the season it won't change how you feel about it as a whole very much.

our winter is having technical difficulties. It failed to boot properly. We're stuck on the circle of death

The only way that technique would work this year is if you have a snowmaking attachment on your lawn mower.

I hope everyone knows I'm mostly just trying to have some fun and make light of this situation. It is awful, but it's not actually ruining my life. I'm just being a smart arse about it. But... how March changes my perception of this winter would totally depend on how good March is and what happens in the next 2 weeks. Either way I would enjoy the hell out of any snow. My 4 year old daughter literally cried last night. She got a unicorn sled for xmas, it was the thing she wanted most...and its sitting totally unused in the corner behind the tree. Yes the tree is still up because my kids don't want to take it down and what do I care I'm grown I can do what I want! Do you know how unprecedented it is to not have at least one sledable event here by now? So for her sake especially I will savor any snow we get. But for me...unless we get something out of what I do think is a decent, not good but decent, window next week, one storm in March wouldn't really do much of anything to change my perception of this awful train wreck of a season. If we get a snow or two next week...then a couple snow events in March...yea it would move this season up out of the total dreg 2002, 2012, 2020 category into the simply run of the mill bad category. Of course if we got some kind of 1960 epic run that included a HECS and 3 weeks of snowcover then of course it becomes a late save good year. But what are the odds of that lol. For me what makes a winter is actually not the final total. And it's not really even a big event. This is hard to articulate clearly but its...was there a decent stretch at some point in the winter with snow cover and cold. It doesn't have to be 20" of snowcover. I was pretty happy with 2018 for example even though it was below avg snowfall here because we had a nice December storm, it wasn't a lot of snow but so cold the snow we got in late Dec and early Jan was on the ground for a while, and the March storm snow cover lasted like 7 days even in March. So at the end I felt satisfied. I got my "feels and looks like winter" fill. On the other hand 2012/13 had identical snowfall totals here but it felt awful because every snow melted the next day and was spread out so there was no period that felt or looked like winter all season.

You know I'm just kidding

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought the fact there were no posts in 8 hours was a good sign.

No idea why, the pattern change is only 40 days away.

To be fair anyone in the profession knows what they’re looking at and would never use those TT snow maps.

Ya it might matter but it’s still noise when the rain snow line moves 7 miles lol. It’s random error not necessarily a trend. It’s also hard to compare bevstaw 12z dropped like 1-2” on northern areas with that late development and 18z ends before we see that part. But comparing up until then they are close in terms of where the snow is. 18z upped totals an inch or two in some banding. I saw nothing that looked like a real significant change.

Noise

TT shows all frozen including sleet and freezing rain as 10-1. WxBell does better at estimating snow v ice, still tends to over do accumulations along the transition zone

There is southerly flow ahead of any wave. If there was cold it wouldn’t matter.

Cow farts

Ya I’m glad you said it. I was thinking it but was just gonna not say anything for fear of pitchforks. But EVERYTHING goes 100% absolutely perfect and it’s still a mixed event in DC and Baltimore and the southern 1/2 of this forum gets rain. With literally a textbook everything for a mid Atlantic snowstorm including a CP airmass!

You just have to know how to decode them. Here this might help… if it looks… bad = crap ok = crap meh = crap workable = crap Kinda good = crap Good = crap wow = crap amazing = crap crap =crap

Oh but next time it will work.

The euro did that at 12z also but no one noticed because it was too warm to matter.

We need the cold to have enough depth to resist when waves try to push the boundary north. let me simplify this. We have always had 3 basic ways to get snow. 1) perfect track and a cold airmass 2) a wave attacking a cold airmass 3) a lucky perfect track in an otherwise crap pattern 1 and 3 have been failing lately. 1 because when we do get cold lately it’s just not cold enough. Getting a transient 3 day cold shot doesn’t help. Getting cold when the boundary barely gets south of us behind a wave doesn’t help. For scenario 1 to work we need a broad expensive cold where the boundary gets down to like southern TN to SC before the next wave starts to lift it back north. When the boundary is stalling 50 miles south of us before the wave even starts to pump a southerly flow we’re toast unless it takes a perfect thread the needle track. We want the rain snow like to start down near Atlanta as the wave just starts to get going. Now how often lately have we ever seen the boundary get that far south? Scenario 3 is failing becausese it’s been so warm that even if everything in a micro sense goes perfect it’s just too warm. We’re left with only getting snow lately from scenario 2 which is why we’re struggling.

But you’re saying exactly what I’m saying only you’re acting like it’s fine and I’m saying I hate it. Yes I do think CC made years like 2010 and 2014 somewhat better. But we always had anomalous 30”+ winters a couple times a decade. If 2014 was 39” instead of 33” due to CC that is not nearly enough to make it worth having to go through years and years of utter no hope shut the blinds patterns now. A few extra inches in what was always going to be a snowy season anyways affects my mood way less than the fact that the other 75% of the time is now utter garbage. I think most would gladly sacrifice 5-10” off our two good years a decade to have the normal in our aRea the other 8 years go back to 15-20” v this crap where a single digit season is the most likely outcome in those other years which makes up the vast majority of the time!

I’m not sure you realize how bad it’s been. Baltimore needs to average 30” over the next 5 years just to get the last 10 years back to “normal” and that’s the new lower 19” normal. Forget getting back to the historical 22” normal!

The ridge retrogrades too far AFTER but even for the week it’s ok we just don’t see the push of cold we need. And even when it starts to retro a PV displaced like that there should mitigate some. Ya you’re pointing out the imperfections but it’s never had to be 100% perfect to snow before. If it was we would average…well like 8” which is what DC is averaging the last 7 years! We need to be able to get some snow from flawed looks. Nina historically means we don’t get a ton of snow not this. This isn’t typical Nina. We rarely get a dreg year in a Nina actually. This is not normal.

There is one simple problem. Look… day 7 ecmwf This should be the seeding eastern US with arctic air. Don’t anyone say a thing about the pac or puke this is a straight flow off the arctic into a broad trough. But look 4 days later… severely displaced PV and it’s just not cold enough. Despite a continued CP airmass and straight feed off the arctic the boundary is at our latitude which isn’t good enough because any wave along the boundary will push it north of us if it can only barely get your latitude between waves. ITS JUST NOT COLD ENOUGH and it has nothing to do with the pac in that case!

I'll just post the data for Baltimore and you can decide for yourself. This is snowfall before Jan 1 by season and a linear prediction line showing based on the data how much snow is most likely each year. The drop is pretty evident. The raw numbers are this... Over the whole period of record Baltimore averaged 4.1" before Jan 1 BUT.... over the last 30 years its 2.6" Over the last 15 years its 2.3" Over the last 10 years its 1.1" Over the last 5 years its 0.72" That seems pretty alarming to me!!! So I guess the questions is....are you talking about right now in the very recent last 10 years or so past...then YES its almost impossible to get snow around DC and Baltimore before January. But saying that and acting like "well that's why it didn't snow in a good pattern in Dec NOT warming" doesn't jive because IMO the warming is why...because it didn't used to be hard to get snow before January. Actually it used to be way more common to get snow than not to get snow before January. Only recently has it become some herculean task to get early winter snowfall. The numbers for DC are even more extreme btw.