psuhoffman

With you 100%. We were discussing this in the zoom 2 nights ago then the Gfs popped out exactly the type of result we envisioned. People freaked out when the mini 2 day torch showed up because we couldn’t see past it at first to confirm it was just a temporary reshuffle and not a complete pattern breakdown. But I like this next iteration of the pac driven pattern better. We’ve been stuck on the backside of the trough for weeks and that leaves us in the precarious spot of needing major amplifications to get a storm and without blocking those are thread the needle low odds propositions. The much better way to get snow in a progressive pattern are boundary waves but those won’t work when your in the suppressive NW flow on the backside of a trough. It looks like after the inevitable cutter and reshuffle the next cycle of the pattern puts the mean trough axis just to our west. Add in another arctic cold dump and we are in a good spot for boundary waves. Cycle that look for 1-2 weeks and I’ll take my chances. Not an HECS look but on the other hand the last 10 years it seems like a cow farts and some weak wave spits out an inch of qpf. So these waves can be substantive. Very odd the pac continues to be very un Nina like other than the amplified NS. But the NS has been on roids for like 6 years now so not even sure how much we can attribute that to enso anymore.

-pna

Just popped in to see how the February torch is coming along.

But this is the fallacy that gets us into trouble. There is no continuity between runs. Next run is just as likely to shift the other way. The better argument might be that perhaps the Gfs still struggles with phases involving multiple waves and chases convection or keys the wrong wave. It used to do that. No idea if it still does. Frankly over the last 72 hours I fail to see how anything has changed much. The consensus is still about the same. Some of the players swapped sides or shifted here or there but still looks like the big storm potential is east of the bay on most guidance with maybe some very minor accumulations west of the bay.

I didn't want to post this earlier when there was still a lot of hope and guidance was coming in but some thoughts I've had watching the "tracking" unfold for this event. 1) Know the bias of the guidance for the situation. The euro and NAM have a known bias to over amplify systems and phase too quickly in NS/SS phase situations. So seeing them as the only guidance the last 48 hours that was REALLY good...shouldn't have really excited much. If something is real it should show up on guidance other then the one that ALWAYS shows that because of a bias. 2) Don't fall prey to our own bias to look for positives and dismiss negatives. Example: if the NAM has a great run at 0z, then an awful one at 6z, then at 12z it trends better than 6z but not quite back to 0z...thats not a "good trend". That means the NAM is just bouncing around within a range of options and overall we are no better off then 12 hours ago. Likewise for an entire suite of guidance. If the ICON was the furthest east and shifts west...that isn't a west trend. Its the ICON coming in line with consensus. If the euro was great and has a bad run...then the GFS trends better...we didnt actually gain any ground. Models are just shifting around within their envelope of likely outcomes. In the end of the suite we were still on the NW fringes of all possible outcomes in terms of significant snowfall. We needed the most extreme NW members of all model runs for each suite, including ensembles, to be correct to get a big snowstorm. Just because there would be one or two pieces of guidance that spit out that solution didnt ever make it the likely outcome. 3) There is no guarantee a "trend" will continue. I am NOT going to argue what a trend is. Call it what you want. I don't care. But when someone says "its still a miss but its heading the right way" I cringe inside. No its not. It's not heading anywhere. It's just one simulation based on the current data available. The next run could easily get worse. But if something got better some people seem to set the expectation that it will continue the same "trend" the following run. That sets us up for disappointment. 4) Inside 100 hours HUGE shifts in our favor become a lot less likely. Outside 100 hours we see major synoptic changes all the time. But once inside 100 hours the guidance has been really good, if you ignore a random fluke outliers and focus on the consensus each run, with the general setup. A lot of these situations lately we are taking very unfavorable synoptic setups inside 100 hours and trying to will the storm into what we want. I'm doing it too! But when we get these minor changes in a model that get it closer to a snowstorm for us...the odds are never that those improvements will continue run after run until its a snow for us. Odds are it was just a minor permutation and the next run is just as likely to shift back the other way because there is a reason its still a miss and is a miss on the preponderance of evidence...the synoptic setup likely isn't right in some way. I think the days of us saying "thats right where I want it" once its inside 100 hours are over. You know where I want it at 80 hours now....over us. This willing it north or south or west just fail's 90% of the time. The models have become a lot better. That doesn't mean we dont still see details ironed out. There will be changes to details. And sometimes...there can still be a true bust where some factor is not handled right and a storm shifts...but its going to be the vast minority of the time not the majority. We dont' want a storm 200 miles away in any direction inside 5 days out anymore. Truth is the storms end up pretty close to what the guidance shows once they start to converge on a general idea usually around 100 hours out lately most of the time. 5) big amped up phased storms are a lot of fun to track but not our best bet for snow in a progressive pattern. Boundary waves are the best bet to get snow here without blocking. Unfortunately we are getting a reminder in how frustrating a pacific driven cold pattern without Atlantic blocking can be. Truth is if we want a high probability of a big snowstorm we need BOTH. But we can definitely score waves moving west to east along a boundary in a gradient type pattern without blocking. Just need luck with wave spacing.

Progressive NS dominant pattern. Has always been a weakness of the euro. This storm particularly is a type it always struggles with. Over amplifies them. The Gfs improvement is also making it look worse by comparison. In the past they would both be sucking and we would just be saying “models can’t handle this pattern”.

It’s just happening 6 hours too late. If that h5 look at 72 was when the surface low was still down off the southeast we would be good. But the low is already to our east by the time the flow goes negative and then cuts off. That’s too late to do us any good with the coastal. Even if the surface showed a good result I’d be skeptical with that progression.

But the guidance has actually been good at identifying this as a likely miss to our east. And that NEVER wasn’t the case. Like I said earlier people just convince themselves otherwise.

@Bob Chill I’m more disappointed in the degradation of the NS SW and upper level low pass. That has some potential v the coastal that I’ve never been excited for. Hopefully that stops trending south.

Ji speaks in exaggeration. But he’s right that ALMOST everytime this happens. But that’s our fault. Partly the way we analyze the model runs and partly fooling ourselves. Because the truth is very rarely is a setup actually a high probability one for us. But a lot of our snow also comes from getting lucky like 10% of the time on the much more common low probability long shot chances we get numerous times a year. 90% of them will fail and in the back of our minds we know that. But we still get our hopes up when one or two fluke runs show the lucky low probability outcome we want and think “maybe this is the one”. The other issue is how we digest guidance each run. We knew this wasn’t a good setup. And we never once had the preponderance of evidence in favor. The most we ever had one one model in any given suite showing a hit. First the GFS then Euro. But every run we dig to find some shred of evidence to suggest it’s trending to that rare lucky fluke. I hear things like “it’s a miss but it’s heading the right way”. No it’s not. It’s a single model projection. It’s not heading anywhere. It was just slightly better than the last run. The next run is just as likely to be worse. But we manipulate the data in our heads to think “it’s trending better”. We put too much weight into the one piece of good evidence when 90% is bad. This happens every low probability threat then people get disappointed when what was always the 90% option happens.

Like a week ago I said our chances would be a lot better if we could get the tpv back towards the Hudson Bay instead of where it was further east north of Quebec.

Same link. Im just reusing it unless we have any issues.

I’ll open the zoom at 10 tonight

I emailed the links to prevent posting them publicly to reduce the risk of trolls. But we haven’t had any issues so far.

Oh god not this again

I could get on around 10

That almost has the profile of where I want the snow mac 72+ hrs out. Weird

Whatever the outcome I’m thankful we get to do these PBP. They’re a lot of fun. But can we just all agree to put the whole clowns on ignore! The mods can’t catch every post and we’re only encouraging them with the reaction. If we ignore them they will go away when they don’t get the reaction they want.

It has the low 300 miles further northeast at the same time. Not "quite" as good?

We need to see some of the non euro/NAM guidance trend this way. But this is why the NAM would work v what the global's have been showing. I placed the NAM SLP position onto the GFS plot from the same time. You can see where the NAM has the low its not crazy to get it into our preferred track. From where the GFS is...forget it. Even with the same trajectory from there its not going to be close. We absolutely need the secondary to develop southwest of the OBX not out east of it.

when it has the right synoptic idea the NAM can get details right the globals miss. But the problem is its hard to know when its got the more general synoptic setup right. And at this range its really prone to wild swings. But very early on which is in its range, improvements happened each of the last 3 runs. I think the idea of it leaving less behind is a good real trend. The stuff at the end...eh

It's just the NAM and we all know the dangers of using it at range...but like you said it does what we want. Where it's going is clear here...that low is going right through our "win box" that I outlined earlier. The key here is getting the secondary to develop down southwest of the OBX like that, which means we don't need some once in 100 years type ridiculousness to get the storm to track up just off the coast and not that 150 miles OTS nonsense that always ends in tears west of the bay.

I'll take the 6" the NAM says I have OTG at 84 and call it a win. The NAM is always right right? I mean the best course of action is to just go with the NAM... someone verify this please.