psuhoffman

I’m probably the location at the lowest as a % of climo right now. Most places are getting close or have passed climo end in at 25%. But I haven’t complained once. Because it’s just a fluke. Blind luck. The fact we’ve had 3 snow events and are tracking several more is the pattern. Exactly where gets fringed or 5” or 10 is just luck. Over time elevation will help die to enhanced lift and colder temps but short term there are no guarantees. And I see several more chances at least before the pattern expired so let’s wait before we declare it disappointing. The biggest problem I see is that we’re still on the NW flow on the backside of a trough after it progressed following the phased bomb. The mean trough hasn’t yet retrograded enough, everything this year is progressing so slow! That phased bomb was just a fluke that amplified and took advantage of a temporarily weakness in the trough to cut. But until about the 25th we’re still in a NW flow. The kind of waves you’re describing, we had a ton in 2014-2015, usually require the trough axis to be further west. Weak open waves will get squashed south of us if the guidance is even close on the baroclinic boundary and trough axis. Until we get the trough axis west a bit we will need something a bit more amplified to pump ridging and defy the NW flow. If I was in Richmond or Raleigh or maybe even as far north as DC itself I might be rooting for open waves in this pattern, but if we want a region wide flush hit we need something to phase just a bit.

I agree but our problem here is the wave spacing looks off for a slider to work. We kinda need the more amplified phase idea or it’s likely a miss south. Just looking at the longwave pattern progression I think our best chance is around the 26-28. Not saying something can’t work before that but the trough axis seems a bit east of ideal. I like where the trough is amplifying around then.

Even that NAM look argues it has room to adjust the precip field north. Gfs there is too flat and supportive of a slider.

I think the euro bashing over one storm is over the top. It did best with the next snow event and was better with the last one too. It’s still better than Gfs overall. That said we’re getting into the range all the major globals have been good. So if only one is off on its own that’s suspect. So I think if we don’t see some significant movement in the icon/Gfs/ggem today that’s a bad sign. I also suspect if we don’t see any improvement today the euro will begin to trend towards them. This is totally superficial analysis based on recent model behavior at specific lead times.

That’s what I saw..Imo 6z would end up an even more amplified storm but it’s developing a bit further east so the question is would it be in time for places NW of 95. But given that g5 at 90 I could see that tuck up the coast even more.

I’ll clean out my inbox now.

Got some turns in with mini psu once they got some lifts open.

Snowshoe around noon today https://imgur.com/a/Tx6unfj

I’ve been busy but just from glancing at the pattern with all the waves I’d be shocked if something doesn’t eventually work out for a flush hit in the next few weeks. Yea it’s possible stuff keeps fringing us one way then the next but just probabilities in this look would put odds that one of these waves works.

The drought thread is suffering

2nd was from an awful year but the one snowy period that year.

As for specific threats I’ve not looked at the frontal wave Thursday so I dunno. The weekend threat imo depends totally on where the timing snd amplitude of the several NS waves coming across. If one of them can be timed up just behind the southern wave and amplified enough it will help pull the storm up. 12z gfs has a NS wave about 12 hours too fast out in front which acts in the opposite way. No way the models are going to nail that yet Imo. Probably 48 hours away from them having a realistic shot. At some point this week the guidance will start to show some consistency both across guidance and run to run and that’s when it’s ok to think synoptic details might be getting resolved.

@Bob Chill to piggy back on you’re pattern post…I’ve seen a lot of fret regarding Feb and I do agree the amplified north pac trough/ridge likely can’t last all winter against the Nina base state but if cold is established and the pac relaxes some, so long as we don’t go all the way to the opposite with a raging western/central pac ridge we probably can do pretty good in February. Actually if we could get another cycle of NAO help in Feb with just a mediocre pac state and cold around that’s better for snow chances Imo. We’ve had lots of years where once we get cold dumped into the conus we can survive a less ideal pattern after and get more chances. On the flip we’ve seen years where good patterns are wasted due to lack of cold around! So long as the pac doesn’t go back to putrid I think we can maintain a workable pattern even after the inevitable relaxation. Maybe even get more snow out if it.

What was our final total? Best guess. Thanks. Btw if that’s the view I think it is my house is just left of those pines on top the hill.

Yup. Life’s short. No need to risk making it any shorter. Just roll with it and enjoy it.

It’s ok. It happens. Can’t control the weather. I might try to get some turns tomorrow since we decided to stay another night. The road is awful right now. Took me an hour to go 500 yards from condo to the top. Problem is all the people getting stuck and blocking the road. Maybe I could get home today if I tried but with 2 little kids it’s just not worth the risk. It’s bad out there and would be for about 75 miles until you clear east of the high ridges to the Shenandoah Valley. And I’m not even sure how good they got those roads there yet but at least there is no upslope snow there.

So far the skiing is an epic fail. All the high speed lifts are on wind hold. None of the expert terrain is accessible. Sitting in the lodge while kids play at kids world debating if it’s worth waiting in hopes the wind dies and they open. Talked to a ski patrol and didn’t like the effusive way they avoided saying anything about prospects. Usually when they aren’t saying hopeful things that’s bad.

Crap… was planning to ski tomorrow. That doesn’t sound too pleasant though. Wonder if lifts will even be running.

Odds DC beats climo this year? lol

I’ve noticed some freezing drizzle/mist and light sleet when it’s barely precipitating but whenever it comes down with any intensity, even light, it’s still snow. I guess we are far enough west to avoid that warm layer with a little help from upslope.

Give me your best guess when it’s over for my records.

Yea we stopped skiing early and had lunch. Now at split rock pools. Tomorrow will be awesome if the wind dies down. We probably won’t get too much between 6pm-midnight in the dryslot but I expect the upslope to start cranking by 1-2am. I could see another 6-10” from that later tonight through tomorrow.

It’s similar without the one key problem for tomorrow…No NS feature diving in behind to phase. Add that and it would cut the same as tomorrow. Remove that from from tomorrow and we would have had a snowstorm. Key detail.

I think we’re just analyzing it from different angles. Lots of intricacies. But Imo (and again maybe this is our climo) when we have a great pac like now we don’t need a cut off Rex block over Greenland. We actually were teased with that for a couple days and that’s when this storm was getting squashed! It was too much! We have a NW flow from the pac longwave pattern, a full ok Rex block is probably too much of a good thing. We need some suppression and the regular old -NAO ridge provided that. It got the SW to dig to GA. But then we need the flow to relax or this is a southern slider like guidance was showing a week ago when there was a Rex block and it wasn’t relaxing in time. We need whatever dives in on the NW flow to be able to turn the corner and amplify up the coast or it’s a cold dry congrats NC pattern! This isn’t 2010. We actually had a trough in the SW so we wanted that crazy block to resist the juiced stj systems that wanted to cut up the east absent that block. That was a perfect combo. Put that block in this pac look and it’s 1977. The bay might freeze over but we won’t get much snow. So my reasoning for focusing on the NS energy behind is that’s the one variable that could have changed this to a white outcome. From where this is in GA we need the flow to relax. No way that affects us at all otherwise. The system had to start to lift from there. So the suppression relaxing when it does is necessary. But that stupid SW diving in behind over amplifies and turns the whole thing negative on a dime. You’re 100% about all the other ways this could have been stopped from cutting but most of those result in a suppressed wave that gets no snow north of Richmond imo. But removing that NS piece allows this to turn the corner but without the phase and going nuts. I think we could have worked with that. Not some huge storm but better than this result. But where you are turning the corner comes with precip type risks so I can see you rooting to be on the northern edge of the suppressed idea. I smoke cirrus in that scenario so…no thabks So what you’re describing