psuhoffman

Very good point! I think I separate this into 2 categories for me. Hunting for individual snowfall events and seasonal. If we get a 3-6” snow in February in that moment I’ll enjoy it and have a great time and be happy. But if the season ends with 8” at DCA and 25” here, it’s a fail! Especially considering the current situation. We’re in our worst snow drought ever! I’m not “hunting” for just another “well at least it wasn’t 2020” winter. I’m hunting for a season that breaks us out of this malaise. A legit good snowfall season. Or to quantify it…at the end of the last 3 winters we could say “we’re in the least snowy 4 year, 5 year, 6 year stretch in history”. I’m looking for a season to end that malarkey. And I think DC needs about 18” this winter for us not to say “it’s been the worst 7 year stretch ever” when it’s over. My data is to show its very unlikely that happens and we’re probably ending yet another year still in our worst snow drought in recorded history.

Mostly a bunch of years DC had almost no snow at all.

PS: ya better hope I get at least 1.5” in the next 10 days because the results for DC in years I don’t have at least 2” heading into January are even uglier!!! Like shut the blinds ugly.

I look up pertinent stats, if they’re depressing it’s because our climo is depressing. I think people are mistakenly equating big snow and snow. Big snow in DC isn’t common before January. But some snow is. By common I mean like 60%. But of the other 40% some are El Niño’s where they do often start awful then turn it around. Years like 1966, 1978, 1987, 2005, 2015 where we had no snow until late but ended with a big second half. That’s not a ton but knocks that 40% down to like 33%. And guess what like 30% of our winters end up being GOD AWFUL….and those tend to be non El Niño’s where it doesn’t snow in DC at least some before January. The last 3% is the one exception out of all the years in that cohort, which was 1999-2000 when all our snow came in 10 days in late January in one epic heater. I would argue that was monumental good luck since the pattern wasn’t even that good, but maybe we’re due for good luck again! I’ll show my work. This is all the snowfall prior to Jan 1 at DCA in non Nino years going back to 1970. 6.8, 5.2, 1.5, 11, 0.1, 0.4, 1.4, 3.1, 0.3, 1.7, 0.3, 0.3, 0.7, 1.2, 4.4, 3, 1.0, 2.6, 1.8, .4, .5, T, 2.0, 0, 6.2, 4.8, 2.6, T, 2.1, T, 0.2, 1.5, T, 1.9, 0.4, T, 0. 15/37 years didn’t have at least 1/2” of measurable snow by Jan 1. About 40%. That 40% went on to be below avg 93% of the time with an avg snow of 6” and a high of 15.4”. We can get a snowy winter in a non El Niño. It happens. But the fact is every one of them produced some snowfall in Nov and Dec. fact is most of the times we’ve headed into January snowless in a non El Niño we were headed for a cliff. One time it turned around to be slightly above avg, a couple others eeked their way to a near median respectable result. The rest…well we’ve become used to it lately so at least there’s that!

Bingo…the TNH has a correlation with a se ridge. I think historically there are enough examples where that can be overcome to make the snow correlation weak. But lately the SE ridge is winning and bullying everything else.

Here is a depressing fact. In all NON el nino seasons in the last 50 years where DCA doesn't get at least a half inch of measurable snow by Jan 1 the avg snowfall is 6" and the chances of an above avg season are 1 in 16. The avg goes down to 5" if it doesn't snow by Jan 10 and 4" if not by Jan 20.

Be like this in here today

I guess it’s a matter of perspective. Do I feel better at where the pattern likely heads than where it’s going to be the next 10-15 days after about Dec 28, ya. But that’s a low bar. From Dec 28 to likely Jan 10 or so we’re facing a total no hope don’t even bother to look pattern. So even a shift to some low probability pattern is better. Even in our absolute worst winters there are chances. Even 2020 we had a few shots that just didn’t work out. There will be better patterns and at least some threats. Can we overcome the persistent TNH/WAR ridge? Dunno. I think if we get another -4 AO between Jan 20 and Feb 20 we probably do ok. But let’s acknowledge pure math here. El Niño’s can be notorious late starters. I warned Mitch in 2015 that no snow into January did not mean we were doomed. 2005 and 2007 flipped late too. But that’s not true of La Nina’s. The stats show when we get deep into winter in a Nina without snow they tend to end up REAlLY bad like 80% of the time. Math sucks sometimes.

Are they same people who liked where we were heading 2 weeks ago for now? It could be worse. If we had a raging +AO with the pac issues I’d say it’s likely a non winter total dreg bust like I did right about now in 2019. I’m not saying that now. There is hope. But it’s VERY likely we’re headed where I thought, another below avg snow year. Whether it’s a god awful almost no snow year or just a more typical awful 8-15” across most of the area bad is still TBD but it’s becoming highly unlikely this is the year to break us out of our historic snow drought

Most got some snow in Dec 97. Not much but some.

How’s the anafront snow looking?

So much salt

I was thinking the same and kinda hinted at it in my comments last night how all the best current analogs are ninos. Our current typical bad start aside maybe it’s a positive that so far we’ve not seen much canonical Nina atmospheric response. The pacific has been variable with perhaps more of a Nino ish lean overall.

I’m on page 13 of my paper on how the models all busted warm in the Dec 30 1997 nor’easter then at the last minute teased us with a big snow, yet we still failed due to a tragic dryslot when there was slightly too much separation between the surface and mid level energy also totally missed by guidance. A double bust! The result was probably our best chance for a major snowfall that season ended up a general 1-3” across the area which would have been a win except one run right at game time teased bigger rewards. Because we need to know…

Every 4/5 years or so we do get some note worthy snow from an anafront setup. Problem us models like to hint at it all the time and there is no way to really know when it’s legit until very close range.

I saw some data months ago that favored modoki based on sub surface temps. Haven’t looked recently.

Man didn't cause this... I’m not engaging in the blame game. Never have. I’ve not wasted a single post on the causality. Ppl can believe whatever they want. But it is getting warmer. Whether it’s from a natural and temporary climo cycle or man made makes no difference to our snow prospects in the here and now.

I agree with @CAPE that our next modoki Nino is a great test case. We underperformed our last Nino. The excuses have some validity. But if we underperform the next one…it’s starts getting harder to ignore the obvious. If we get a modoki next year and DC gets 40” then maybe it’s been more a temporary cycle. I think it’s part both. Maybe 70/30 bad pattern cycle v climate. This would have been a bad period in any decade given the pac longwave pattern. But I think it’s been made worse. I’m curious myself to see how “muted” our snowfall is once we get a truly good and long term sustained pattern where we can’t make any excuses if it fails to produce prolific snowfall.

Fixed.

I think it was 2017 It’s been almost every winter lately. I can remember way too many good track but just no cold anywhere storms over the past 6 years. I’m not even sure which he means. Recently there were 2 in January 2020. 3 in January/February 2021. I did good up here BARELY but those should have been snow everywhere given the track and time of year not just at 1000 feet.

Just to drive home the point. This was a previous atrocious period from the 70s. Look at where the negative anomaly is centered! We would absolutely torch in that pattern today with a severely negative PNA and positive AO/NAO. Yet by todays climo (it’s using 1991-2020) all that produced was “avg” h5 heights in the east! Do you have any doubts that today a repeat of that longwave pattern would have reds that would make Satin blush all over the east!

Agree but then you’re taking a 9” storm in DC and making it a 5-6” storm. And what if that had been a 3-5” snow from the WAA and the storm never bombed to get the deform going. Then we lose it completely. We’re still bleeding imo. It’s just impossible to know exactly how bad. But back to my main thesis, I don’t think the overall pattern has been that consistently horrible the last 6 years to warrant the results. It’s not been a good period by any means. But I think the atrocious results are a mix of not so good pattern base state AND…ya know.

It’s hard to say where we go from there. I don’t think analogs are as useful as they used to be. Additionally almost all the top analogs to the current and coming pattern are Nino years. The one Nina that’s close to this wrt pattern progression and where we are heading now was 2005/6. The progression has been pretty close this year. Unfortunately if we follow a similar trajectory we didn’t take any advantage of the early blocking this year like that year and then we suffered a long time in January 2006. We did eventually get back to a good pattern in Feb but it underperformed and only yielded the one storm. As good as it was the h5 from Feb 1 on would make you think we got more than one snowfall. Imagine we almost wasted this look because the one storm we got was barely cold enough. On a side note I remember on eastern everyone saying leading up to the storm the pattern wasn’t great and it was a thread the needle setup. It wasn’t cold and so there was a narrow margin on track but i never understood that. The pattern couldn’t have been better. It just wasn’t that cold because we never recovered from the pacific onslaught that obliterated all cold from our side of the northern hemisphere. Here’s a thought…would that even work again? If the exact same pattern repeats would that Feb 2006 storm work out because almost all the snow around DC fell with temps between 32-34 degrees. Or would it be a 34-35 degree rain and we would totally waste the same pattern?

We can overcome a -pna in Feb and March with blocking but it’s hard to almost impossible in December.