psuhoffman

Mdecoy hacked your account

The dumb angle is always a problem.

Details like the double barrel thing are useless at this range. From a pattern sense, west NAO block, 50/50, western ridge, TPV under the block that rotates a lobe and dives down to our SW, yea this setup resembles lots of our big snowstorms. But also a lot of close misses. It’s similar to December 2009. But it’s also similar to December 2010! I posted the h5 of 6 storms once and 3 were HECS and 3 were total busts and you couldn’t tell the difference. The pattern is great. We need luck with the details now.

Feb 14 2014

I think some don’t realize that due to time dispersion at that range any low signature will be diffuse. Also often biased east because of outlier members that have a weaker solution along with the fact the low generally gets deeper as it progresses east. That’s a hell of a signature for that range. If it was 3 days away looking like that then we can worry.

Worth noting that. That’s all.

I almost said something then figured Naw let ‘em squirm a little.

@dtk or anyone else…did they ever update the gefs to be run off the new operational or is it still the old gefs?

It does look VERY euro like but a little less strung out and more dominant with the “second secondary” so a little better result. The double barrel structure still limits a top end outcome a bit but no one (except one persons) would complain. I still kinda doubt it ends up that way. Maybe. It could. But I’ve seen this look a lot at range and 90% of the time it ends up a more consolidated system when we’re talking about this kind of upper level feature involved.

Nice to meet you. I found this screen name laying on the ground discarded. Figured I’d pick it up and try it out. What’s up.

Why is this thread littered with mentions of every god awful bust we’ve ever experienced. Is this some kind of snow god reverse jinx or something???

It develops a double barrel structure because the initial wave escapes and a second secondary low develops near the better mid and upper level energy. Ratios would be VERY high for our area as all the snow comes associated with the upper level energy. 5-8" across most of the area. If that was how it played MOST of us would be happy...but I actually think if that H5 pass is correct this solution is faulty and the more likely result would be a more consolidated system further south. But none of those details matter at this range...just another pretty picture to look at while we wait a few more days for more clarity.

safe travels

Since we finally have a legit tangible threat I think its worth noting a trend I have observed the last few years wrt the guidance. There has always been a general time period when guidance was likely to converge on a consensus and then from that point on its only the details that usually need to get ironed out. Where the fringe ends up. Meso scale banding. Exact rain/snow line. But the large scale features and general track is locked in. Obviously there are exceptions where a huge across all guidance bust happens but thats rare. The old timers remember in the 90's and early 2000's when that "convergence" didnt typically happen until 36-72 hours out. More recently that convergence on a general solution has been happening between about 100 and 140 hours. We are still outside that range where guidance will shotgun solutions within a very wide permutation of outcomes every run. Trends in the ensembles are still way more important at this range then any one op run. Once the various globals begin to converge on a solution, likely not for another couple days at least... then we can start to worry about details. And once convergence happens it still doesn't mean there won't be changes...just that those changes likely wont be 500 miles! Until then it really doesn't matter what any one op run says. Once we do see that convergence around day 5...we don't want to see a track that is hundreds of miles away from what we need. The old "NC bullzeye is fine day 5" thing has not worked for us lately. The error from day 5 isn't what it used to be. But we are still way outside that range. On a more specific note regarding THIS setup... The pattern is absolutely loaded heading forward. About as good as we can hope for. There will likely be multiple threats. But even with the blocking this is a more difficult setup for guidance to resolve because we are at the mercy of stream phasing. These are not STJ dominant systems. This is a MUCH better pattern than a typical NINA but its still not fully a split flow STJ dominant Nino pattern where guidance might be able to pick out these storms from 10 days out. When dealing with the kinds of multiple interactions we are here its unlikely the final solution is known from as far out. Reminds me of January 2000 when we knew the pattern was ripe but the guidance was keying on the wrong waves from range and we ended up getting a few nice storms but none of them was well resolved until the last minute. Guidance has improved a LOT since then so I highly doubt we get any last second surprises like that but it wouldn't shock me to see something we previously "gave up on" sneak back up on us in the 3-5 day range. But I think it would take monumental bad luck, even for us...to get through the coming 2 weeks without any meaningful snow.

My point was with that pacific look it shouldn’t be that warm in the east.

He also predicted a snowy December and that I would have above normal snow for like the 14th time in the last 15 years.

It’s way out there so not worth panicking yet…but worth noting since it’s on all 3 ensembles day 14-16. The pac progresses to a favorable configuration with an Aleutian low and pna ridge. But the warmth from the pacific overwhelms the whole pattern and even with a trough in the east it’s game over. In 48 hours once the cross polar flow cuts off the pacific air brought in by the pna ridge eradicates all the cold from N America. Hopefully it’s wrong. If it’s correct that might be the most troubling thing I’ve ever seen. If an Aleutian low/+pna/-NAO doesn’t work because pacific warmth overwhelms the pattern around New Years…I dunno what were even doing anymore. I’ve said this over and over but 90% of our snowstorms didn’t come from cross polar flow arctic patterns. Most -epo patterns that bring down the arctic hammer dump the cold too far west. The full latitude pna epo ridge that dumps cold directly into the east is extremely rare but also can lead to just a cold dry period. 90% of our snow came from a combo of favorable pna and high lat blocking to facilitate a favorable storm track in a moderate temperature regime that used domestic typical winter cold and the snow fell with temps very close to freezing on days that likely would have been a high of 40-45 had it been sunny instead of snowing. If we need some perfect pattern that somehow incorporates cross polar flow AND blocking we’re just fooked most of the time. That’s a super rare thing that isn’t going to happen much. We have to be able to snow from a good storm track with a typical domestic cold thermal regime or we’ve lost most of the ways we used to snow.

It was the only good snow that winter in northern VA. My senior year at Oakton HS. It was in the mid 30s as the snow began then temps quickly fell to 33 then 32 as the intensity increased. Eventually towards the very end of the storm that evening temps dropped below freezing. I think the temp splits for the day were 37/29 at IAD and 39/31 at DCA.

@Maestrobjwa you asked for a specific example where something in the past might not work today. This was one that kinda popped into my head. Feb 8 1997. 6.8” at IAD. A general 4-8” across the whole area. Somehow is snowed during this pattern… A weak piece of energy cut across under the pseudo block in southern Canada and managed work out. But there was no real cold anywhere in the east south of New England. It was 41 the day before and 37 for a high that day at IAD and most of the snow fell at 32-33 degrees. This stuck out because it was one of the last examples of a snow from a feature that used to work a lot. A south central Canada block with an otherwise +AO/NAO. There are quite a few examples of that look in the snowstorms I studied in the 1940s-1990s. Then they went extinct. We had a couple patterns like this more recently and we got a perfect track storm but temps ended up too warm. One was late January or early Feb 2020. Within that got awful winter we had a week with a Hudson Bay high and a system came along and off the coast. But the temps even in mid winter were just blah and without any thermal gradient to aid lift from WAA the system was just a weak POS that gave us some drizzle and scattered rain and mix showers along the NW fringe. A nothing burger that at the time stuck out to me as similar to ways we had salvaged a small to moderate snow in an otherwise bad season and mediocre pattern. But as I’ve said recently we just don’t seem to have any prayer in a bad pattern anymore. No way to luck into snow from some micro feature within the bad pattern. Lately unless the pattern is good we’re torching with 55 degree temps and no prayer of snow. Kinda doubt that pattern from 1997 supports snow anymore.

Imo what’s “winning” is complicated and depends. I think from a distance without knowing the synoptic details I would be happy with a 4” snow event as a general rule. But again, if 24 hours out were looking at a HECS and it falls apart to just 4” we all know none of us is feeling great from that. Then there is the macro v micro. In the micro I’ll be happy with a 4” snow on Dec 23. But at the end of the winter if all I got for the whole season was say 17” (which is a bottom 10% winter here) because we had a couple great patterns and all I got out of them was a few minor snowfalls…it’s a fail for the season. Getting a small snowfall is fine but at some point we need to cash in big and max out a good pattern if we want to have a good season. To make a baseball analogy…going into a good pattern like this is kinda like having the bases loaded with nobody out and you’re 4-5 hitters coming up. Let’s say they hit a sac fly and an infield single that gets in 2 runs. In the micro that’s fine. They did ok. Then your bottom of the lineup strikes out. Later the heart of the lineup comes up with 2 on and again they manage to get one run in. In the micro fine. But at the end of the game when you lose 5-3 you look back on that and realize you needed a 3 run homerun or a base clearing double somewhere in there. I’m fine with singles as long as once in a while we get that home run. Or at least a double! There was an arctic front in the 80s that dropped 7” in an hour some places in northeast MD with thunderstorms. So anything is possible.

Careful….You’re tip toeing near a rabbit hole that got some pretty mad at me last year In seriousness though…something I’ve anecdotally observed over this 6 year run that’s been the “worst in history” wrt snow…while the pattern has been awful much of the time, what’s actually made it worst ever was when we did get patterns that historically were plenty good enough to snow they were also mostly frustratingly underperforming. That said we are just at the precipice of this coming pattern but if we did manage to waste a -4 AO, -epo, neutral pna pattern coming up that will go into my memory bank as another check mark in the “uh oh” column for sure. I’m optimistic we cash in somewhere coming up, just saying.

In general yes so high elevation valleys are the best location for ice. The Shenandoah and some of the valleys in WV get awful ice storms. But higher elevations also advantage from upslope flow which can cool the low levels. It can also enhance precip which further cools all levels.

Considering the time range and all the noise between now and then that needs sorting out, the Gfs was pretty close to the same solution as the cmc. Yea I get that for many here the fact one is wet and the other 2 feet of snow is lol but synoptically a slightly colder antecedent airmass in front, slightly less amplified primary, and the Gfs would have been the cmc solution.

That was my childhood, waiting for 803 to be called.