But for there to be WAA precip ahead of any wave there has to be some mid level southerly flow! That's normal. If the mid level flow was from the north we would be smoking cirrus lol. The problem is the airmass just isn't cold enough for the equation we need to work out. It's that simple. We can debate the "why isn't it cold enough" but all this attempt to find flaws that just aren't there is annoying.
Look at all this SE flow.... and it was absolutely sheeting snow at my house in VA at this time.
Know what the difference was...it was cold. The equation worked there because the air mass was cold enough that even with the WAA at the mid levels the profile of the column when mixed was cold enough to support snow. Anytime we have a wave approaching us from the west there is going to be a southerly flow at the mid levels...and there HAS TO BE or else we wont get precip!
I am also going to poke at this interpretation but let me be clear your not wrong, we just have different points of view of the same thing. A different spin. But I am NOT saying you're wrong. However, to play devils advocate here...the point of the blocking is to influence the track of mid latitude waves in the way we want, specifically to get one to track just under us and to foster there being higher pressure over the top of it as this happens. We have that here! In the micro sense our flow is determined by those local features like the low and high on either side of us. The "blocking" and "50/50" features are irrelevant once the dominoes have been set in motion and the storm is tracking by us. Our local flow is dominated by that low near VA beach NOT some feature 1000 miles away. Those features did their job to get the storm to VA beach.
Now in this case we don't have an NAO block. But we do have a Hudson High and we both have discussed how that is the next best thing to an NAO block...historically its been the next best way to get a snowstorm absent an NAO block because it simulates much of the same longwave impacts on the mid latitudes near us. I used 1996 above because it was a product of a Hudson High NOT NAO blocking. The NAO blocking in December was actually mostly a fail in our area, although NW of DC did get several small snows out of it. We got more snow in Feb from true blocking...but the 2 snowstorms in early Jan were from a very similar pattern to right now. Jan 2016 was also a very similar, maybe even more similar despite the opposite enso to this weeks pattern (which maybe isnt shocking since we're in more of a super nino look than a nina).
But the Hudson block does do its job. There is a perfect banana high over the top on the 12z GFS. I really don't get the "high is racing out" takes. As the system is reaching our area the high is bananad over the top of it.
Yea once the low is up off MD and NJ the high is long gone, but that is normal. The high is going to have to retreat by that point but it shouldnt matter because once we are on the west side of the low the northerly flow behind the low should save us. But of course that doesn't matter if the airmass is crap all around us...that northerly flow is just taking warm air from just northeast of us into our area.
Look at January 2000, where the high is by the time the low is to our latitude. Its long gone.
But it didn't matter. I guess I am just saying why do we need to drill down to these super specific reasons why everything wasnt the exact perfect everything we needed when the real issue is pretty obvious to me...its just not cold enough. In a grand sense the whole airmass over all of north america just might not be cold enough for what we need to make this work no matter the fact that its a pretty freaking awesome synoptic setup and progression that if it was simply colder would lead to a snowstorm.
I am NOT saying we have to get into the elephant in the room. We can not discuss or debate WHY its too warm. I am not trying to bring that into here. I said my peace with that over in the futility thread this morning. But whether you think its a right now problem or not...to me the only real problem with this setup is the whole airmass just isnt cold enough. Frankly even on the permutations where the storm cuts inland its not the synoptic setup thats flawed its just so warm the storm is able to meander inland in search of a thermal boundary to ride along. Had the airmass had any freaking cold at all it would take a more canonical track even in those worse cutter looks IMO given the longwave setup.
