psuhoffman

I don’t have the ability to quantify this accurately. I’d be very interested if someone found a way to model this and went back and tried to use old saved data to project how some historical events would be different in todays temps. Of course maybe we could do that simply for the UHI effects but it’s not really likely to work on a full scale since the temp changes affect the global patterns so the truth is none of those storms would have even existed at all and completely different storms would if we changed the whole temp equation. You can’t just change just the temps but keep everything else the same. It doesn’t work that way. But to simplify I think everything’s bleeding the wrong way to some marginal degree. Ignoring the fact they wouldn’t be the same events I think in general storms that would have been a 30* 8” snow would be a 32* 6” wet paste bomb now. Some 6” paste bomb might be a 2-4” slush slop fest now. And what I was a slop fest is now white rain. You get the idea.

This is another event I log into my "this is concerning" mental file. Maybe not for DC and Baltimore as marginal events in mid March were always problematic for them, but up here this was troubling imo. We had a low off the Delmarva with a reasonable airmass profile across the CONUS to work with, at least by recent standards, and the lower levels didnt work out even for our area with 1000 ft of elevation. Even when it was pounding snow it was 34/35 degrees at my house! There have been numerous little things that bug me every time I see them. Like how there are frequently storms in mid winter without any appreciable frozen precipitation shield on the NW side at our latitude! Like how there are more and more examples of storms where there is no ice transition zone because the boundary temps are so warm well into the "cold sector" of the storm that it just goes right from rain to snow. We saw a troubling thing today that I have noted recently a lot...typically there are two zones of higher snowfall. One just NW of the rain/snow line where there is heavy precip associated with the frontal/baroclinic forcing and one further NW associated with higher ratios and better mid and upper level forcing. But lately the former zone is often rain...and the only snow zone is the latter because the rain snow line is much further NW then it should be given the track of the system and where the baroclinic boundary is! The retort I get every time I bring these things up is for people to focus on the imperfections. "Well this or that wasn't exactly perfect". Yea. That's true. I am not saying it can't snow anymore. But its not going to snow very much if we need EVERY DAMN THING to be exactly perfect. It used to snow frequently in very flawed scenarios. I know...I did a deep examination of every warning snowfall event for both our area and Baltimore! Not even the majority were perfect classic everything was right setups. All of the 20" plus storms were...and I would say most of the 10" plus ones in the cities are also...but up here we bootlegged our way to 10" storms quite a bit with really funky looking patterns and synoptic looks in the past. Recently it seems to get a snow of any significance we need everything to be almost freaking perfect and that is annoying and has be pretty disillusioned because perfect doesn't come along very often. We need to be able to win with decent but flawed looks more often then we are lately imo or our winters are going to be...well like they have been most of the last 7 years. And yes I am including 2016 in there because while we did get the HECS...that was a PERFECT setup so that doesn't count towards my gripe here...and there were 2 other marginal but pretty good im0 setups that year that failed. One managed a decent event up here but was another example of a mid winter perfect track 36 degree rain event in the cities!

This…I obviously don’t have the ability to prove anything with statistical significance but deductive reasoning paints the picture. Just putting some facts together. 1. Temps have warmed in the metro areas most. 2.Boundary temps are affected the most of all levels. 3. I was struck by how many of the snow events in dc and Balt happened with temps right near 32! What bothers me most is the amount of times recently we’ve seen synoptic setups that SHOULD support snow, good tracks, decent thicknesses, and it’s a 36 degree rain event. I do think 30 years ago those were snow and it’s why our avg is dropping.

Of course we finally get a juiced up wave to take a decent track a week too late for it to work.

Hopefully the midweek system hangs around on guidance and we can do a zoom early this week. Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve been dealing with some stuff.

This is a matter of degrees type discussion. I agree with help up top AND the pac we had it would have been better. I don’t doubt it’s still possible to get cold. But we used to get arctic shots from an epo pattern without Atlantic help. Snow was harder to come by in those. But some of our coldest shots were in pac driven years without a lot of seasonal snow to snow for it. It just seems we need more and more of the dominoes to fall in our favor now.

I’m not surprised given the NAO in our struggles to max out snow potential this year. But what’s more concerning imo is the cold was kinda weak sauce for the most part too. We discussed this before the pac pattern set in. It was perfect for arctic shots yet we really only ever got typical cold. It seems really difficult to get a true arctic cold shot here lately even when the pattern is aligned right for it.

No one should demean anyone over cultural differences. Humans need to get over our ingrained tribalism. I also wish EVERY culture, especually my own, could be more introspective about both the positives and negatives. Every culture has things worth defending but also things that are inexcusable.

I had snow cover for like 5 days from that lol

it was 3-10-76. A year with very little snow before that. According to coop data it was a general 8-12” across our area. Some specific totals I found. 8.1” in Westminster, 12.5 in Unionville. 12” in Hanover. 9” in Emmitsburg, 10.5 in Parkton

I think I had 14” from that.

Mid March is kind of a hot spot for snows in Nina years also for some reason. Even some really awful ones like 1976 managed a mid March fluke.

Go explain it to him. Have a nice conversation.

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It snows more further north. Got it. Don’t know what we would do without you. Thanks.

What a full and rewarding life you must have.

I generally agree but the AO flipping negative could change the equation slightly. I’m skeptical but willing to be open minded. But a epo/pna driven pattern with a raging positive AO is just as flawed and difficult to score in as a -AO with a hostile pac. Right now, as I said to Cape in his storm thread, we are in a double bind. We need waves to gain amplitude to overcome the progressive flow and not get suppressed. But with a raging +AO anything that does amplify likely tracks to our northwest. We’re left needing to thread a needle. If the AO does flip negative we could have more luck we there could be some resistance to a more amplified wave not just cutting. We are running out of time but could get a window before it’s over if the changes up top on guidance are real.

Once it became apparent we wouldn’t get the tpv displacement we wanted and thus was just another iteration of the same pattern I didn’t give it much chance. We had some luck early during the transition when the AO was still beat neutral. But ever since this became a pure pac driven pattern with a +++AO it’s been mostly fail city. We had a similar problem early in 2015 before the tpv became displaced into Quebec in Feb. The amplitude waves need to overcome the progressive flow will usually mean they also lift too far north because of the lack of blocking. We’re left walking a tightrope. I have slightly more interest with guidance suggesting the AO is about to flip. It’s too far out but that could change the equation in our favor. Of course we’re in March by then so…

We’ve acknowledged we’re losing some marginal snow events (which is why our mean is falling) due to climate change. But I think that extends even more drastically to ice events. They are all marginal by nature, happening along a narrow scope of conditions where the boundary layer is just cold enough despite warmth above. And the boundary layer is the most affected by warning and especially warning due to increased UHI effects which extend well beyond metro areas now in a lesser but still real way. I’m not saying ice storms are impossible now but I think they are a lot harder to come by here than 20 years ago. I’ve seen a few setups Ute last 5 years that I thought synoptically should support icing that ended up 35 degree rain.

Fixed

@CAPE not upset just saying I’m not excited by another event where the best case scenario is probably another minor event here. But I’m taking the kids up to Killington this weekend and they are getting 10”+ later this week so I’m good. Way more excited about that than disappointed by another fail here.

I guess location matters. The most amped run we had was like .25 qpf up here and you talk about that like it was likely something we can’t get back too. So sorry if I’m lacking enthusiasm for something that the best run of any model ever showed still wasn’t amplified enough to be anything more than another fringe nuisance event for my location.

And even in those best runs it was kinda a pathetic weak sauce system. 4/10ths qpf with temps near freezing in late Feb isn’t gonna do much damage. And you’re talking about that like it’s some high water mark we can’t get back too. Lol

We need to time up last years Atlantic pattern with this years pac pattern. I suppose a Nino would help increase the odds, at least it can’t hurt. But our biggest problem since 2016 is that both the pac and Atlantic long term base states are opposite of what we want. There is variance but when both are spending 75% of the time in a bad look it gets really difficult to time them both up. And for all the attempts to simplify things to one factor (it’s enso, cold, precip, pac, Atlantic) truth is we need some help from both if we want to get a big winter which if we’re being honest is what most in here are hunting for.

I’m not sure enso drives the bus the same way anymore. The last Nino behaved like a Nina. Last winter and this didn’t really behave like canonical Nina’s either. There was plenty of stj this year and the pac pattern was almost dead opposite a typical Nina. If we had any Atlantic help at all I think we would have done very well. Nina wasn’t our biggest problem a raging positive NAO was.