psuhoffman

To be fair I actually started calling for that period before the models latched on by about a week. But…it doesn’t ALWAYS work. Im not perfect in these calls, frankly I think it’s impossible to be with long range stuff. Remember last year. I utterly failed. So even if I get this one right I’m only 50% on these “bold” calls recently. Have to go way way back many years to find the last time before those that I was really excited about a window a month out. It’s been mostly crap for a while.

I’d prefer it a little more tucked 966 lol

Actually when I made the call for mid Feb to Mid March it was based on analogs and timing out seasonal cyclical progressions of the AO and MJO. At the time no guidance showed much, but it emboldened by feelings when they came around to what I was thinking. They all aligned. Analogs to cold enso years when we get a significant -AO in early January have another drop sometime mid Feb into March. I didn’t by the collapse of the MJO because the guidance did that last cycle. I timed it into 8/1/2 for Feb 15 on. And the AO has been in a very consistent cycle of huge drops and slow rise then repeat and it was timed up to so the same mid Feb. Basically everything is look at to try to decipher long range clues was pointing the same direction and that rarely happens. The only thing to give pause was it was going against the recent late seasonal patterns as you pointed out. But I just have the sense we’ve broken oit of the dominant pacific cycle of the last 6 years. Not saying the pacific is great now but I think we are in the middle of a PDO phase change and we are not seeing the same degree of hostile influence we did recently. So I went with my gut that this would be different and another cycle of -AO and hopefully snowier was coming. I also like the idea of cycling the general Jan pattern again but with the shorter wavelengths of late winter. Should be a stormier period.

I think after the wave around the 16th passes we have a solid week where any decent wave is a major threat.

Oh none of this has changed my mind about what’s coming. I always liked later in Feb better once the blocking gets going and has time to impact the storm track.

A couple days ago the runs that gave us 12-18” that second wave didn’t even exist. The models were totally wrong on which wave to amplify. They were keying on the wrong SW all along. Now they’re jumping on a SW they washed out before and it’s canibalizing our storm.

The weaker wave 1 gets the worse wave 2 will probably be

Unfortunately this run continues the trend that the further south wave 1 the further north wave 2. It’s a lose lose. There was a path to a win win if both waves split the energy just right. But a stronger wave 2 is the worse case scenario.

It’s continuing to trend towards holding back the energy and washing out what was our storm as just a lead wave in favor or a trailing wave. The problem is that trailing wave is behind the high and so we might lose the cold window unless it trends faster and less amplified.

I’d buy that at this point if I could. @Terpeastis right it’s bouncing around based on minor changes but the larger trend has been less amplified which fits the seasonal trend but isn’t what we want.

Damn physics

It’s possible but more iffy imo because the PV is still centered to our west as it drops and rotates under the block leading up to that event which opens the door to it amplifying too much and pulling north too far west. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen but I’m less sure of that. Any waves between Feb 19-23 it would be really hard for them to cut to our NW given the flow, assuming reality is anything close to what all the guidance (and history of blocking progression) suggests. That’s our first really high probability window imo. Before that we have shots but they are all flowed to some degree.

The last storm we had during blocking a week out it was way up to our NW cutting and ended up fringing me to the south. I’m not worried at all yet.

If we get multiple 6”+ snows out of “my pattern” I’m retiring from ever making a long range prediction again and walking off like John Elway.

Yea if part 1 trended north…I wonder if the relationship is inverse. Meaning a north wave one means a south wave 2 because wave 1 takes more of the energy and the return flow behind it suppresses the boundary for wave 2. Some were assuming a south wave 1 means south wave 2 but I think it’s the opposite.

Lol this sounds kinda like an acknowledgement that we’re in trouble up here with this one. It’s ok we know. We’re hard to it. But ya it’s been crazy weird. Again due to my elevation I’ve been lucky that some marginal events worked for me. But lower elevations from Baltimore north it’s been by far their worst stretch ever. Longest period without a warning snow by a large margin! I can’t explain it. It’s as if there is a force field making every storm go north or south. To rub salt in the wound a couple storms that imo should have broke the curse ended up with bad boundary temps that cut what should have been an 8” snow to a 4” slop storm. I can’t explain it. Probably just chance like getting heads 5 times in a row. Unlikely but it happens.

I’m still optimistic for the window I’ve always felt good about. Funny thing is for a week I stuck to the feeling this wasn’t really going to work. The analogs to this pattern just aren’t big snow for our area. Small snow yea. But ironically after run after run of big snow I let myself start to think ok this might happen. Then it immediately went sideways. It’s not over. Not saying that. Just I should have stick to my gut and not started to get excited lol.

I was talking about for Mitch and my area. And to be fair it’s 1”, 3”, 2”

You’ve obviously not run into some of the beggars I have!

Ok I’m gonna be a deb here and point out our 6” mean is from 3 waves 2” at a time with rain in between. That’s kinda meh. Sorry if that offends some. No I don’t need 8”+ to be happy. I was tickled pink by the 6” snow I got last month. But a bunch of 2” fringe jobs doesn’t do much for me. If that makes me a horrible person so be it.

You have to realize most of the people dooming this are in northeast MD. I know you think you’ve had it bad but they’ve had it 2x worse. I’ve been lucky I’ve caught some of the SE edge of storms that went just to our regions north over the last 8 years like 2 weeks ago. But there is an area from Baltimore northeast in our forum that’s had absolutely no good snowstorms the last 8 years. Every single one fringed them. Some went north. Some did what this one is looking like. But it’s absolutely amazing. I keep saying it’s just random bad luck but my god. Combining both these points, imo it depends if we see a change in the orientation of the precip. The better runs had a SW-NE trajectory. This W-E trajectory won’t work. It’s not coming at us from a high enough latitude if it’s not amplifying and gaining latitude. If it was we would have temp issues because the thermal gradient is situated such that we need a wave that’s gaining some latitude as it progresses. Also in general the north trend is real in non blocking regimes but NOT when the wave is on a W-E trajectory. Waves that are gaining latitude tend to trend north. I’ve noticed through when a wave is not gaining any latitude on its way east it actually trends south more often. I think it’s just a product of the fact that if a wave isn’t gaining latitude it’s not amplifying but also it would take an error earlier in the process where the storm has to start out further north. The north trend is usually from models underestimating the feedback from the southerly flow ahead of the wave once it gets going not from a placement error of the wave as it ejects into the plains. TLDR version, if we bet to 72 hours out and this still has a W-E trajectory it probably is going to stay south. If it starts to take on a SW-NE trajectory we are good.

We already lost it. Last GEFS was awful. It was just a fluke the op was a wet north outlier.

Unfortunately there are places in here that are not in the same boat. If you are 50 miles south of DC you want a solution that is awful for me lol.

People are down about this week and don’t see an immediate threat to turn too and so they vent.