psuhoffman

Got a coating

There are some similarities (nothing is ever a perfect match) to 1995 right now, seems he might be buying into that progression. I'm seeing it...but staying reserved. I've let good early season tea leaves fool me before. I figure if this does go to that rare Nina win GREAT and I will be excited and thrilled I busted but no reason to get my hopes up and change my expectations yet.

Like 4 years ago when I did that case study of every storm that averaged 5” across the 3 airports I did notice that there were a lot of good Atlantic bad pacific combos in the cohort for February and March and almost none earlier in Winter. Just supporting what you’re saying, it’s a lot easier to overcome a bad pacific later in winter. Early…it’s pretty difficult. We kinda need the pattern upstream to be favorable to have a good shot the first 1/3 of the snow season.

Now that we are close enough to look at pattern progression and infuse some observations about the state of the pattern into the seasonal expectations I am slightly more optimistic. But most of the long range indicators are still pretty bad. And the last couple times I let early season positive pattern signs make me get optimistic despite a Nina... we mostly struck out early, then the pattern reverted to more typical nina crap for the core of winter. So I am staying reserved this time. But one of these years we will finally get another good snowfall year without the long range classic climate drivers indicating it...and when it happens I am going to miss it and be horribly wrong. I really hope its this year. If so maybe with a better enso coming next year we could actually go on a bit of a multi year run...we are due for that.

Lately it's been problematic even in January/February, which is a huge issue since that look there is responsible for some of our biggest snowstorms historically, but as you said it works a lot better later in winter when SST's have cooled more and we can survive pac puke mixed in a bit more.

Figured I'd post this in case anyone found it interesting. I played around with a congressional redistricting tool I use with my AP Politics class to create districts based on snowfall. You can see the population statistics on the right for each zone. I did the best I could but its not perfect since snowfall doesn't follow zip code lines, especially in some mountainous micro climate areas. But its close.

I take insults from some people as compliments.

Chuck using 95/96 as an analog. Is there an asteroid coming I don’t know about???

No matter how you slice up the data we’re very likely to end up below avg snow. However…highly likely is not definitely, there are some flukes. And below avg isn’t no snow at all.

Excellent thread...unfortunately it doesn't matter as much for our area wrt snowfall. It does matter a lot wrt expected temps. Actually, if you take out 1996 and 2014 (not sure why 2014 is even in the cohort) there isn't that much difference in snowfall means and probabilities between the 3 cohorts for the DC area.

I agree with you but since he is post limited and it’s only a couple posts a day, maybe we should just ignore him and carry on as if he isn’t there. The additional posts responding to him are what actually clogs up the thread. I’ve been guilty of this too but I’m done engaging.

Who is interested in doing zoom chats again this winter when there are legit threats? If there is enough interest I will set them up again.

There are some people that think the Earth is flat. We don't need posts pandering to them either.

I'm holding out for a Norlun trough

hypocrisy

Sure can’t tell by any of your posts

Their coaching staff if doing an excellent job and they would be much improved no matter what…but the Giants are the luckiest and by far least impressive 6-1 team I’ve ever seen.

No 2018 wasn’t fading as much as 2017. By February of 2017 the enso was actually neutral. But typically there is some lag and frankly we just need so much to go right that having such a major influencer being even somewhat hostile for even part of our snow season stacks the deck against us. Our snow climo is simple…every so often (25-30%) the stars align and we get a good snowfall season. The rest of the time something is off and we get what is typical here…some degree of suck.

I agree next year could be very good. But in my life there have been several seasons where we were counting on a fading Nina to save us and it NEVER has worked out. I remember this same talk in 2000/01, 2011/12, and 2016/17. All 3 were fading Nina’s, the first two at the end of a multi year cycle but it did us no good. All 3 ended up absolutely horrible god awful snow seasons around here. Maybe this is the year the “fading Nina” thing finally helps is in any way.

They all looked pretty good at h5 but the moderate ones were better here. The weak ones tended to have less STJ and more miller b v miller a storms. I’d still take a weak Nino but moderates are definitely better here. 1987, 2003, and 2010 are the most recent examples of moderate modoki. All were blockbusters here. 2005, 2015 and 2019 are examples of what can happen with a weak Nino. I’d certainly take any of those over a Nina but they weren’t great here and 2 of them hit NYC north harder with a lot of miller b storms.

A moderate modoki can. 2003 and 2015 being recent examples. A strong Nino or east based one the warmth overwhelms the pattern.

That’s where 90% live so of course that’s where most of the discussion will focus. I even center my posts towards the population centers even though I don’t live there because I want discussion and most in here don’t care about my micro climate. It’s nothing personal against us we’re just outnumbered by a lot in here.

IMO those storms would have worked here had they been less progressive. That would have been the example of a coastal timed up with arctic air I gave as the two ways we still seem to get snow...along with boundary waves in cold periods. But not all of them will hit...and frankly a good number of them...when we do have a cold pattern will tend to be more progressive and miss our area. We do better in terms of getting a flush hit from STJ waves that often occur during less cold periods. Problem lately has been they are all just too warm, even when they do take a perfect track. It can still snow...and eventually we will have a big snowfall winter. But our snowfall averages were already pretty bad...and I do think this whole "worst 5 year, 6 year, 7 year" stretch stuff is partly because of the climo changes and the fact that we are losing some snow on the margins every year. @Maestrobjwa asked how this compares to the similar pac period in the 1970s and I think thats a great comparison. That period was the next least snowy period for Baltimore, for example. The reason this one was a little less snowy IMO is probably partly due to climo changes since then more so than the pattern actually being worse now then that one. Actually looking at H5 mean patterns from that period and this one...you could argue we had a slightly better overall pattern the last 6 years than the comp period in the 1970s....but there have been several storms the last 6 years that probably would have been wet snow in the 1970's that were cold rain now.

The sad truth is...if the only way for us to get snow is to get lucky with a progressive wave during those -EPO cold/dry patterns...or to pray to time up a coastal with arctic air in place.... well we're going to have the results we've had recently!

Yea but were digging a historic "hole" in terms of our snow drought at this point. The more years we go without a big snowfall winter...the harder it will be to get out of this "worst stretch ever over this many years" drought we are in. For example...I ran the numbers and DCA needs 18.6" this winter to avoid being in the least snowy 7 year period. BWI needs 16.3" to avoid that fate. Right now...its highly likely neither reaches those numbers. But what's worse is the numbers get uglier and uglier the longer this goes because it gets increasingly difficult to find such a long stretch at DCA and BWI without at least one huge snowfall season. Pretty soon if both continue without a truly snowy winter...we will need a 30"+ winter just to get back to avoiding the WORST PERIOD EVER category for the decade. Think about that...I'm not saying we need a HUGE snow year to get back close to "normal"....that's saying soon we will need a HUGE snow year just to avoid being the WORST PERIOD EVER! Until we break out of this long term snow funk our region is in my bar is that...a season that truly gets us out of "worst period ever" status. And unfortunately...given the numbers...it's likely we are still in that category come the end of this season.