psuhoffman

What about the other phone?

no this setup was always way too noisy to likely be a HECS event. The way this evolved was probably one of the best scenarios we could hope for. If this tracks right I really do think a 4-8" event is possible and short of getting lottery level lucky with a very complicated phasing scenario...that's about max potential this could have been IMO

at this rate by tomorrow I'm going to find out I predicted 40-50" with lollies to 60

All the STJ waves that tracked under us and could have been a big snowstorm were too warm

Oh it is, but no matter what Baltimore is only getting 5" because they aren't allowed to have warning events there anymore. @Maestrobjwaknows

check your ruler, you probably just mixed up the metric and standard sides

FWIW over the years I've noticed a tendancy for the NAM to be high on precip when the system involves convection or deep moisture and dry in situations like these.

This has sneaky upside. It's not really a clipper, its a progressive west to east wave that partially phases with the NS. It's trending more amplified, but I think there is a limit to how far north it can shift given the boundary. Lift looks maximized in the DGZ and mid level temps are cold. Get this into the .35-.55 qpf range and this could reasonably become a 4-8" sneaky snowstorm.

One thing I like about the euro, and some other guidance trended this way some at 12z, is it's amplifying the wave just enough to get a little better moisture transport across the thermal boundary and thus has a bit more uniform precip field. It also is a flush hit with that better precip field right over our area...but it would mean less extreme winners and losers and just a more uniform snowfall across the area. Not saying there wouldn't be the 5" v 3" type variability but would probably see less 5" to 1" type differences within small geographic areas within the precip field with the euro solution.

That isn't the UKMET's fault that's an issue with how the maps are generated. For whatever reason no US outlets provide quality maps for the UKMET.

The UKMET precip type maps on pivotal are awful. It works both ways...when the surface is cold they calculate ice as snow. Several times someone posted this crazy snow map all excited and I checked the thermals and was like "that's not snow". It also does this sometimes where because the surface is near 32 it calculates snow as rain. It seems to overly weight the surface for the precip type calculation. Just use the precip maps then look at the thermals and disregard the snow maps if you want to judge the UKMET.

Honestly I’d Ignore the southern qpf max. History suggests results there will be underwhelming. Focus on getting into that northern max. That’s where the goods will be.

Icon still has the duel banding feature but it doesn’t show on the snowfall because the southern qpf max is rain this run.

Yea. Let’s table the “will it ever snow again” question. I think the more accurate way to phrase what was answered this year was “is it likely we get a region wide cold/snowy winter in this current pacific cycle” and the answer is no. We probably have to wait for this PDO cycle to end for us to have a chance at a region wide 30”+ type winter.

Yes! Southwest flies out of IAD and DCA also but those aren’t hubs so flights are more limited. They have more at DCA than IAD unfortunately. Just for a general reference I was looking at flights to Denver the other day and BWI had 16 options, DCA 9 and IAD 2 for the day I looked at. Obviously for you that’s upside down but still worth looking into. The southwest app is super easy to use to swap flights and use points.

That’s still risky because there’s been an increase in western high elevation thaw/rain and freeze events mid winter lately. Fozz is right about open snow. They are great resource and warn of these events a week or two out usually. The other trick is to use southwest. I have a southwest credit account that earns miles and I literally charge everything I do and pay it off monthly to accrue enough points for 3-4 free flights a year! Plus Southwest lets you change plans up until 10 mins before your flight with no penalty. They have a ton of daily flights from BWI to Denver, SLC, Reno, Seattle, Spokane and Albuquerque. Hotels and car rentals are easy to find refundable reservations up until 72 or 48 hours. Yea it’s a pain to have to change all the reservations last minute but better than wasting all that money on crap conditions imo.

I was thinking this earlier today also. So far we actually had 6 “waves” track under us that affected us with precip. The problem is the 4 that were juiced up stj waves with significant qpf all were too warm. Only the waves that were NS dominant and more progressive were cold enough to be snow.

I’m less concerned about the location of snowfall maximums as I am the recent increase in high elevation rain events. As an avid skier who makes trips out west regularly I can attest that at many of these ski resorts the difference between a 250” season and a 350” season isn’t all that noticeable in terms of the quality of skiing once you get past early January. But in recent years there has been a marked increase in warm events that do impact the ski season in a significant way. Rain to elevations unheard of previously. Warm periods where temps get into the 40s and 50s even at 9000 feet! These wreck the snow quality. And if you actually melt some of the snow in a season where snowfall is low, now it’s noticeable v just a low snow year but when it’s below freezing from Xmas to March! For 20 years I took a trip out west almost every season and not once had to cancel or change plans due to a freak thaw or rainstorm. Sometimes conditions were epic and sometimes just good but never was the resort warning of significant closed terrain due to some freak rain or high temps. Winter Park, Vail, Aspen, Taos, Snowbird/Alta, snow basin, A-basin, Jackson, Revy, Breck, Steamboat… not once in all those trips to all those places did I encounter a sheet of ice or closed natural terrain mid winter. But in the last 5 years 3 times now I’ve had to cancel a trip at the last minute because conditions were crap. And one time last winter I took a chance and regretted it because Streamboat and Snowmass were both a sheet of ice and most of their expert terrain was un skiable. I could have skied that garbage here for much less. The west finally got a huge dump just in the last 10 Days but as recently as early Feb many western resorts were still reporting only 80% open terrain. In Feb! That’s ridiculous! Many resorts in New England are still only 55-60% open in mid Feb! We don’t have to argue over why. But as an avid skier warm events affecting ski resorts is most definitely increasing lately.

Logically that fits what happened twice this winter. But I’ll admit I’m far from an expert on this subject and so all I am doing is taking others research and saying “ya that makes sense given what we just saw”. But it’s a fact that more often than not the SSWs over the last 10 years have done nothing for us and frankly a few times they seem to have disrupted what was a good pattern when they occurred! 2018 is the one exception lately where a SSW seemed to shake up a crap pattern and established blocking to help our snow fortunes. But in the whole SSWs have not really done a lot for our snow prospects.

The 18z gfs shows how the next 2 weeks has potential still. It’s not the epic pattern but it’s not a shit the blinds either. With an active wave train we could luck into a hit from another wave after PD before the pattern possibly goes to crap in early Match.

A 3 day cold shot doesn’t impact the ski resorts nearly as much as not having crazy warm thaws or high elevation rain that wiped out their base and wrecks the conditions.

Jackson Hole tracks summit, mid mtn and base snowfall. I’ve never seen such a difference between the 10,500 and 6200 snowfall reports. Several storms where they got 20+ at the top and rain at the bottom. Very unusual. Unfortunately probably going to become more common

It moved the banding features around about one county and is about .05 dryer overall. These are noise changes at 60-72. If this was a bigger storm we wouldn’t even note that kind of shift but it matters when we’re trying to get hit by these two little meso bands because it’s mostly a weak POS wave. And a slight qpf change looks more significant when it’s less qpf to begin with. But those bands are going to shift around 20 miles every run until game time and change in intensity some. We wouldn’t expect a model to nail the exact location and qpf of a meso band within a larger storm at 60 hours. That still applies here even though the meso band is all there is.