psuhoffman

Who knows but calling for a torch at some point once this pattern finally (and it will eventually) breaks isn’t a bold call. One trend the last 10 years or so is that when it’s an unfavorable pattern the east coast torches. We don’t see a little above normal, it’s either a favorable pattern or it’s almost shorts weather in DC. I’m exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. And he will just can kick to Feb or March and say delayed not denied no matter what happens. He is way easier to predict than the weather. Agree with Wxusaf. We all know the limitations of a Nina. But the general pattern of 2010-11 puts us in the game. What went wrong with Boxing Day was more complicated than just “Nina”. There was a messy interaction between streams. Change the timing a few hours and we could have been crushed. It can happen. 1996, Jan 2000, Feb 2006, Jan 2011, March 2018. Coastals don’t always miss us in a Nina. We can’t change the fact it’s a Nina and we should remain tempered somewhat by that fact, but ill take a repeat of 2010-11 and let the chips fall. I think the biggest difference between 1996 and 2011 was just bad dumb luck more than anything else. Greenland is so close to the pole it’s as far west as lots of places.

I am pleased with what I see. But I’ve been incredibly busy for many reasons. And you, wxusaf and Bob have done an excellent job. Plus I think most in this sub now know what we’re looking at. It’s an incredibly knowledgeable group in general. Given how busy I’ve been just didn’t feel it was necessary to make some long winded post saying in essence “ditto”. But I suspect if this pattern is anything close to advertised we will begin seeing discreet threats soon and rest assured I’ll be around.

Yes

@WxUSAF and @CAPE nailed it but I wanted to add a visual. Please don’t interpret this as an expectation. It’s not February and it’s not an El Niño. But…this is the h5 from our snowiest 15 day period ever. Everything is a balancing act in waves and every ripple in one place impacts the others. Without ridiculous high lat blocking that pna would be a big problem. On the flip side that kind of blocking with a +pna might just be cold and dry.

It’s not horrible. But due to the order of matches I think a win against Wales was more critical than normal. Here is the issue…assuming the chalk scenario in match day 2 (Wales beats Iran, England beats US) it leaves us needing an England team that’s already qualified and will be resting their players to get a win v a Wales team playing for their lives on the 3rd match day. And possibly even for England to win by several goals to help us in a goal differential tiebreaker with Wales. That’s a bad spot to be. What we need to root for Friday imo, other then the obvious of getting a result v England, is for an Iran win. In that scenario we would control our own destiny match day 3. Second to that an Iran Wales draw would at least mean Wales would need to beat England not just tie to guarantee we are eliminated. Failing to get points v England and a Wales win Friday means we don’t control our fate. We would then need an indifferent England to beat Wales, and for the US to beat Iran, and also to win the goal differential tiebreaker. That would be an awful position going into match 3. Unfortunately that’s also the most likely outcome of match 2. To put it in mathematical terms our chances to get out of group went from about 85% to 40% when Zimmerman gave up that penalty. The World Cup is an unforgiving event. One mistake often can do you in.

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.