psuhoffman

You can dream. And when you wake up you can enjoy your 55 degree Xmas!

You’re really trying to drive @Maestrobjwacrazy aren’t ya! II hope I’m wrong about this but I felt some if the ancillary indexes were more conflicted the last couple years. The Nina was more favorably centered. 2 years ago solar was more favorable. The QBO Nina combo analogs werent awful. The North Atlantic sst wasn’t as hostile either. I wasn’t optimistic but I saw some reasons to think “maybe”. This year Im struggling to see much. But one thing to hold out hope is maybe historical expectations aren’t valid anymore. I wouldn’t be totally shocked if things turn out better. I never gave high confidence in any long range forecast. Just not expecting it.

How many times in recorded history has that happened?

It very likely will snow some. And I will track it and enjoy the hell out of it! And maybe we get a rare fluke and it turns out better despite all evidence. Just saying I am shaking my head at the idea we can have a year where the enso, N pac, high latitudes and Atlantic are all wrong and it somehow is going to just be ok. That hasn’t been my experience around here. That’s all. My seasonal forecasts absolutely suck so who cares. I’m probably wrong and DC gets 30”!

I keep reading comments about how the Atlantic and pacific are going to suck but…and all I keep thinking is “have people forgotten just how hard it is to get snow around here”. Sometimes even when almost everything is perfect we can’t get snow. But somehow this year everything imaginable is going to be against us but it’s going to be fine.

So just in time to ruin our modoki Nino lol.

And yet all 3 were still below avg snow in DC and Baltimore! @40/70 BenchmarkYour posts are awesome and I like your analysis and agree with most of it. I’ve not said I expect a complete North American fail 2002/2008/2012/2020 type winter. But where I am skeptical of much success here, and I do wonder if you realize just how frustratingly maddeningly difficult it can be to get snow down here…is the fact that even most of the “colder” Nina years like 2009, 2018 and 2011 were pretty awful snowfall years in DC! Even most cold enso neutral years like 1994 were below avg snowfall in DC! For us to get a decent snowfall season in DC/Balt where the majority of this sub resides, it typically takes either a Nino, or a super lucky convergence of most other factors being in our favor. In the last decade we’ve had periods with a good pac or good NAO and it did nothing for DC at all Additionally when avg snow is only 13.7”…Im also not sure how some of the statements like “it’s probably going to be below avg but not awful” even jives up with reality? How do you have a below avg snowfall season in a place where avg is barely above single digits and not have it be “awful”. Before you say I am being unrealistic…I am not using my standard. I am going off the fact that if we go 2 weeks without snow the winter thread in here becomes flooded with whining and complaints. I’m not sure such a thing as a “below avg but not awful” snowfall year can exist by the standards I see in here. So I do agree there are likely to be some periods of cold and some snow! But what that typically looks like in DC in a year with a likely predominant +NAO -PNA and a -enso is usually ~ 6-10”. And I’ve experienced a ton of exactly those type winters in the 20 years I’ve been on weather forums and from experience the general tone in here as that kind of winter plays out is always “this is awful”. So I don’t think my disagreement is necessarily with the forecast just with the perception we can have a below avg snow year and have the perception not be that it was bad.

Everyone is still saying the same things. But some aren’t being jackasses about it because they got called out.

Ok, have it your way. Maybe this is why we have like 5 people who contribute actual substantive posts in here anymore when we used to have like 20! I appreciate good analysis and scientific based forecasts even if they aren’t the outcome I would prefer. But I guess this isn’t the place for that. Enjoy your silence.

It wasn’t personal. Your post was just the latest of that kind so it’s the one that got quoted. Pretty much anyone who is making a legit science based prediction is going to say it looks bleak because it does. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences and opinions as @leesburg 04says, but as much as the “it’s probably gonna suck” posts bother some the litany of “I wish people would stop being debs” post irk me when all they are doing is making honest legit observations. The last thing I want is people to feel they can’t be honest because they will be told it’s too depressing. If someone can’t emotionally handle an honest good faith forecast or observation that’s not the fault of the forecaster. I get annoyed during winter when the thread gets filled with substance less whining and woe is me crap. It is what it is. But now some are having problems with legit posts just because they all say the obvious thing which is things don’t look good for a lot of snow this winter right now.

Is this the thread to discuss the coming winter or is this thread supposed to be propaganda to make snow weenies feel better? Everything looks like crap. It’s about as uniformly bad across all measurable factors as I’ve ever seen it! Therefore when knowledgeable posters wander in and comment it’s going to be the same. Some version of “looks like $&@!” That’s not their fault. There are only 3 options. We get a litany of “it’s likely crap” posts. A bunch of BS wishcasting just to make people feel good. Or this thread is dead silent. All this doesn’t mean we can’t get lucky with a couple storms or that we can’t 100% rule out a fluke. But “maybe a fluke” is not something that can be analyzed scientifically. So what do you want this thread to be? Based on real science or based on making people feel better about their chances of frozen water which their emotional stability seems overly tied to?

It’s too early to give up on any snow. A snowstorm is still possible. And it’s too early to completely 100% give up on a snowy winter but the data suggests odds are very low. Less than 10% low. But our odds of a snowy winter are only about 27% going into any year if all indicators were neutral.

I’m messing with you. But you’ve been on here for years. And you’re not stupid. You know how useless those seasonal monthly plots are from this range. But you also know what our odds of a snowy winter in a Nina when the QBO, Solar, and both north Atlantic and Pacific SSTs suck. You just want someone to tell you otherwise. But you know.

To torment you

Models are useless at this range. But there are some knowns. The vast majority of our snowy winters and HECS storms come from an El Niño. And drilling down even more most are modoki or basin wide ninos. Super ninos and east based ninos actually have a mixed track record. Among the rare snowy winters that had no enso help we usually saw multiple other major drivers lined up in our favor. 1996 was a Nina but the combo of North Atlantic and north pac SST, solar, and qbo was lined up and countermanded the weak unfavorable enso. 2014 the north pac was very favorable and drove the bus. Right now I see nothing in our favor to indicate this is likely to end up one of those snowy years. It’s possible things change. Maybe by November there’s been a radical shift in something. But it’s unlikely Imo. But that also doesn’t mean it’s definitely a dreg 2020 type year either. Could just be a typical 10-15” in the corridor “normal” winter. But most in here, and I don’t blame them, call those sucky winters. Just not as sucky. Truth is 60-70% of our winters are some degree of suck with a few good winters per decade thrown in just to keep hope alive. It’s really hard to predict between a total shutout and just a typical 12” winter in DC because we’re talking about getting lucky like twice making all the difference. look at 2000. We got 3 straight snows from the only 3 threats we had all winter. That could easily have been a dreg winter with less luck. 2001 was opposite. Probably twice as many legit threats as 2000 but less luck. Even 2020 there were several threats and they didn’t come together. Get luckily a couple times and it was just a typical sucky year. So I won’t try to say is this ends up a dreg under 5” winter or a typical 10-15” type winter… but I do think thosw are the reasonable expectations and goal posts at this point if I had to make an educated guess now

I lived about 20 years in south NJ and DC metro with your current climo. That’s why I moved. What I didn’t do was stay and subject everyone to constant complaints because I wasn’t happy with my climo. Before you try to kid yourself that this is only about the current run of bad luck and that you would be fine with climo…that’s bunk because you’re torturous laments began long before we actually got into true anomalously snow drought territory. The truth is you would not be happy with our 1990-2020 type climo…and you certainly won’t be with what is likely to be a worse climo for the next 30 years! You should be honest with yourself. You can either accept you live somewhere snow is rare, and stop expecting it and just enjoy when a fluke happens. Or move somewhere an hour northwest like I did and suffer the commute. Or relocate to a city like Boston where snow is more common. Even there you have to live west of the city to really be snow drought proof.

What I’m about to say is specific to the DC-Baltimore corridor. The western and northern higher elevation fringes of this forum have a different climo. I’m not predicting a total shutout or anything. But they typically only get 2-3 above avg snowfall winters a decade. And “avg” is only like 15-20” across much of the area….so anything below is bad. It’s just how bad. So truth is, our climo is to have a lot of crappy winters with a blockbuster every so often when the stars align. This doesn’t look like that. What level of bad I can’t say. Whether it’s a 2002 or 2012 or 2020 level disaster or just a more typical crappy winter like 2011 or 2018 who knows. But while we do enjoy whatever snow we get many are hunting for the actual good winter, and we’re due for one, but unfortunately it doesn’t look likely to be this winter.

Last year was well below normal here but I still enjoyed the snow I got. It seems you’re chasing the kind of winter we only get 1-2 times a decade. That will leave you frustrated most of the time.

Ugh. It’s way too early. Ya it looks bad now but it’s not even August yet. I said things can change. Ya right now my super early forecast would be below avg snow but it’s too early. Plus even if it is a bad year it will probably snow some. You take everything to extremes.

Unfortunately everything I see now is pretty grim regarding winter prospects. I really appreciate our out of region contributors, they’ve been adding value to this discussion, but the worrying about exactly what the enso state ends up is more relevant to their snow prospects than ours. It’s evident we won’t have a Nino and if you take all other enso states, neutral, weak nina, mod Nina, strong Nina, our snow probabilities the last 40 years are nearly identical for our local region. Once you get north of 40 it does still make a difference if we get a weak Nina or strong one. Only if you go back further (and I don’t think those stats are relevant anymore) do you see any real differentiation here. For us unless we get a Nino (and even then we really need a mod-strong, but not super, basin wide or modoki) our prospects aren’t great. But in all other states we can and have equal chances of a fluke decent to good year. But we need other things to line up. AO/NAO, PNA, EPO, SOI being the big 4 actual pattern measures we need to be lined up in our favor somehow in some combo. All the other stuff we discuss like PDO, QBO, solar, enso, soil moisture, hemispheric energies and planetary tilt are just things we can try to use as hints how those 4 will line up. Right now absolutely nothing is lined up the way we want. Just about every measurable is opposite of what we want. What more is there to say? The only good news is these things can all change dramatically from this range. Let’s just hope it does. Or sometimes a fluke that defies every measurable thing we know happens. And yea Iets root for that, but “maybe there will be a fluke” isn’t the basis for a forecast unless you’re JB.

It’s amazing the cutoff in many decent Nina years near Philly. Same in 2018. My area northeast can do ok. But south of there doesn’t cash in even in “better” Nina’s. On another note not sure a repeat of 2001 works out even here. The coop near here recorded ~35” but most of it came in several very marginal temp storms. Two where the snow mostly fell with temps at 32-34 degrees. A repeat of that winter adjusted a couple degrees warmer would be a dreg winter here.

I need to visit your reality. In mine a significant % of people have decided reality is subjective and science is a conspiracy.

I would guess in that range yea.

Some pics from around town 27 just south of Manchester South side of Manchester These are just down Ebbvale from my house. Whatever it was the worst passed just a few hundred yards south of me down my street. my kids think they’re camping.

27 between Manchester and Westminster was a mess. Trees and power lines down everywhere.