psuhoffman

Maybe this week was the 30,000 ft view big picture “luck” balancing out because I’ve felt the DC area has had pretty awful luck on the whole much of the last 5 years. Don’t get me wrong the prevailing patterns were a mix of decent but flawed and bad much of the time and I’m not saying DC should have done well…but it takes a special kind of bad luck to do as awful as it did Imo. There were enough “decent” periods even in some of those really bad almost snowless winters that I felt like DC should have lucked into at least one decent event. But it’s random. Maybe the randomness turned in our favor finally.

Honestly though, while I was pretty confident this wasn’t going to be one of the REALLY bad dreg Nina’s I still had conservative expectations in terms of final #s. But had I known most of the forum would be at or close to double digits by Jan 10 heading into prime climo AND shockingly the STJ would be showing signs of behaving in a rather un Nina way…I might have gone even higher. At the least we’ve already avoided this year being in that dreaded list of years we all hate to even mention. But with some luck MAYBE this year has the chance to be one of the rare Nina exceptions. No I’m not talking 1996 level necessarily but the rare Nina that surpasses climo isn’t unfathomable given the current results and coming pattern.

What he said! If you just look at the NS over New England and how far south the baroclinic boundary is you might think so but the NS and SS are phasing and the trough is digging pretty far west, about to go neutral near the Miss River and the flow is relaxing ahead of it. My guess is that leads to an absolute bomb up the east coast. Probably a very high impact and large expansive storm due to a deep STJ moisture fetch aided by the warm gulf then the Atlantic and used to maximum impact by a fully mature phased cyclone. That’s the kind of storm with a huge win zone between the high ratio powder on the NW side to the high qpfs closer to the boundary and the fact that even places that might change to ice/rain north of NC had to go through a long period of WAA precip first. The kind of storm we aren’t having to worry about sharp edges and exactly where a band sets up to eek out a few inches. Alas it’s a day 10 op run so enjoy it and imagine living the dream then move on. @WxUSAF feel free to correct me but that was my impression of where that was headed.

It’s on my lawn

It doesn’t matter because it’s day 10 and whatever it showed you can’t take it exactly as is so that’s good enough. But we know how it was heading. That trough digging about to go neutral over the miss valley as the system in New England departs leaving room to amplify up the coast and fresh arctic cold in place with the rain snow line in Georgia to start as the WAA gets going. It was going to end well. Use your imagination how well.

Ggem was gonna smoke us as the run ended.

I tend to agree but I’m always open to Mother Nature surprising me. But it looks like we have a real winter this year at least.

That was my super secret triple dog dare version. I would have posted it sooner but I had to wait for the fire department to get it unstuck.

I think this worked out pretty well. I was a little low in places. I should have listened to @WxUSAF and extended the 3-6” area south a little. Could have extended the “a lot” zone northeast some as well.

I think the euro and 3k nam did pretty well depicting the axis of banding and general qpf totals in our area.

1) just don’t use the hrrr past like 1-2 hours 2) people need to see what the radar is supposed to look like. Every time we do this it’s like people see returns out in WV and western VA and expect it to be snowing in 15 mins…even if it’s not supposed to be for 8 more hours!!! They forget how attenuation works. Then they freak out over every gap or shift in the precip shield even if it’s doing exactly what it was supposed too!

Or maybe it was just wrong like it usually is past ~2-3 hours

27/26 +SN Can't tell how much, but everything's covered and its purdy and thats all that matters

Careful, some of the banding is now going through a zone where the radar beam is interfered with by Bull Run Mtn.

I guess 2 miles north of me is getting 4-8 but I can only expect 2-4. sucks

I enjoy the flakes in here all the time.

Cant wait for this event to end so we can go back to the long range. Im so over 3 hour events You're one of a kind lol

It's almost go time Currently the surface low is over south central VA moving ENE towards the lower Ches Bay. The upper level short wave is rounding the base of the trough in KY and about to cross through WV then VA later tonight. As that happens VV's will be increasing across the area. That area in SW VA right now I have circled is going to be the main show for the DC/Baltimore area as that lifts NE with the best vorticity associated with the mid and upper level energy. It should be fun for a few hours. This is an excellent profile to maximize snow growth across the area during the passage of this feature. I expect some nice ratios and big fat fluffy OMG flakes.

when I told it I said spread the word

Wine seems to be popular in here

I told it

I like what I am seeing now. Reports to our SW show this is overperforming if anything. That band ripping to our NW is a good thing...that banding riding along the jet was NOT supposed to be our snow. The actual radar matches the sim radar from the GFS and Euro, both of which were decent to good for our area in general. But the intensity of whats happening just to our NW shows what kind of environment we have for anyone that ends up in banding later on as the primary and upper level energy tracks across VA and we get into better lift. If anything I am MORE optimistic right now than I was earlier. Oh and chill out.

Best I could do

what the GFS said it should look like right now... LITERALLY