psuhoffman

I’m excited for the possibility of urban street flooding.

There could be some instability in meso banding. We could even see localized thunder rain!

Look at this beautiful rainstorm we get destroyed by heavy CCB rain! Stormy will be very happy

Drought buster

Control has a perfect track rainstorm too

My forecast was worse than yours because let’s be honest snow is what most care about! No one is more critical of my mistakes than me. The whole point of my participation in this thread is to analyze what happened so I don’t repeat the same mistakes. But you’re off base with the model worship stuff. Go back and read my winter forecast. There is nothing about models. It’s based on analog and pattern recognition. I messed that up just as bad as the models did, but that’s my fault. I valued the wrong variables and miscalculated some factors. This thread has had almost nothing to do with models. The long range thread often is. And we probably do rip and read day 15 crap too much. I think this has become a nasty habit born out of the fact nothing inside day 10 ever looks good recently. And I don’t feel like analyzing fiction range nonsense so I’ll engage in posting unicorn maps for fun. But we all know those day 15 maps are not likely to actually happen. And there is good discussion not model based too. Pattern recognition and analogs. And you should just contribute what you want to be disused. If something’s being missed add it. Participate. Add that value. I have no issue with your point of view. I don’t agree with some of it but so what. But why the attacks? You can make your case without them.

And….if I recall you predicted a colder than average winter and it was one of the warmest ever! But no one is attacking you over it because long range forecasting is difficult. Stop being an ass.

How old do you think I am?

That seemed hopeful, no matter how good the resolution gets we don't yet have the ability to measure every variable involved in the equations accurately. We don't have accurate measurements of every inch of the earth. Plus...incoming radiation impacts the equation and we can't always know today what that will be in 5 days, predictions of solar radiation aren't perfect either. No one is arguing with you that the tools are lacking and need to improve...but not sure what the next step is other than continuing to push the envelope the improve where possible one step at a time. This includes models and non model methods. We are still improving analog based methods and now including AI in both of these.

If we can get 2 consecutive runs with the gfs AND euro showing a significant snow then I’ll pay attention

I'm sure he will listen

Holy crap... if it was possible to explain wave physics in a paragraph I would put a lot of professors and text book writers out of business! But... I think I can try to explain the basics of what you are getting at fairly briefly, at least I will try. Ultimately what puts the whole atmosphere into motion is the Coriolis effect. But what causes waves to form within this are inequities in how heat is added to the equation which disrupts the stable flow or air and then the attempts to balance those inequities. More sunlight in one location. Fluxes in radiation. Water temps. etcetera... now pull back and imagine a flow of water like a river, and imagine an object being thrown into the flow of water and how this will cause a reaction in the flow. At first this is predictable as the waves reaction to the object...but as these ripples interact with other variables and bounce off each other it becomes less predictable over time. It's the same concept in the atmosphere, only infinitely more variables to try to predict for on a global scale. Now to really get into this on the physics level we would have to discuss things like Bernoulli's principle and how speed and pressure factor into these equations but I'm not interested or qualified to teach that physics course on here lol. If it could be explained in a forum post there wouldn't be whole courses on this.

I prefer to focus on improving my own methods rather than worrying about the failings of others. My own analog based methodologies failed me horribly 2 of the last 4 winters so I don't feel like throwing stones at anyone. In my own reflection I think I failed to weight the importance of smaller scale cycles on analog selection. Had I done so I would have weighted 1973 and 1952 higher even though they did not match as many criteria that I weighted too highly like QBO. I also need to correctly adjust analogs for the current temperature regime. The last time I predicted too much snow was 2020 and when I reflect on what went wrong there...I predicted slightly below avg and it ended up nearly nothing...looking back at the analogs I selected had I adjusted them for warming I would have seen how bad it might be. Almost all the snows in the analogs came in marginal setups that when adjusted for a warmer climate I would have seen most wouldn't be snow anymore and I was over predicting based on what happened 30 years ago v what would happen in the same pattern in a warmer period now. So not saying using analogs are bad...but selecting the right ones is a trick and its easier in hindsight to see than ahead of time.

He was being optimistic. Nothing wrong with that. I think back then with the advancements happening at that time in models and supercomputing it was fair to think it was possible but truth is after a significant leap in the 2000s we did hit a sort of leveling point where our scientific advancements bumped up against the chaos we can’t account for. Maybe he underestimated that chaos

this shot here is why I wonder how much split flow blocking works in this regime. I know with the time of year it doesn’t matter but the same concept applies mid winter. If that energy in the west was less amplified and the ridge in front was slightly less that system would slide east under the block and 50/50 and be a threat. But there is a tipping point where the ridging in front of every pacific wave is too much and they amplify out west and then try to cut regardless of blocking.

Snow means say weak but that’s skewed by 1996. If you remove 1996 data says they’re all pretty similar wrt snowfall. Weaker ones do have a colder mean though.

This is true every time except after March 20. Once you get really late in the year there is a limit to how far south the true arctic boundary typically sets up. And the elevation dependent marginal events south of that boundary tend to become above 2k to 3k once you get that late. It’s too late for a pure stj wave to work anymore. And there is a history of some NS waves bombing and clipping NYC north late in the season but I’m too far southwest for those.

@brooklynwx99 I’d be a lot more excited if I was around NYC. They get way more post March 20 snow events that we do.

Here is the problem….even if todays great looks are correct the pattern is setting it a week too late. That wave around the 19-20 has no cold in front to work with. So it’s very unlikely to be a big snow at lower elevations. The boundary is a mess. It would take an incredibly anomalous event. Possible not likely. After that it gets colder but history suggests that’s too late. March 20 is really the limit. There have been a handful of significant snows as late as around March 20. But after only one in the last 100 years and it was a crazy weird inverted trough event. Pure statistical probabilities says after March 20 the odds of a significant snowstorm near DC is too low to worry about until it’s right on top of us.

There is nothing wrong with the pattern...its the date and the fact there isn't really any cold air to start with anywhere that makes me skeptical.

There are hints that perhaps there could be more arctic air involved in the pattern after March 20 or so...but so much would have to go perfectly at that point for it to matter. There is a reason there are VERY few examples of significant snow that late in the DC Baltimore area. For places with higher elevations, you know who you are, there are somewhat better chances late March and early April.

Maybe we could get into the weeds on the exact details, but you know 99% of the people in this forum don't live at 2000 feet either. The gist of his point, that for almost everyone in here it's over...is probably accurate. Weather is crazy, and ridiculous things can sometimes happen...the Palm Sunday storm wasn't even in a cold pattern it was just some crazy Norlun trough setup but its the only example of that in 150 years of records. Could something like that happen again, sure, but I don't see his statement the same way. There is always the chance of something like that, its never 0 chance, but for the lowlands in here the chances are now too low to be worth tracking everyday and getting excited.

If we compare this -PDO period to the two previous DEEPLY -PDO cycles most similar, the early to mid 50's and early to mid 70s this isn't that much different. The results are about 10-20% worse which is in line with what we would expect from warming. What makes this period a LOT worse so far is that we had 2 bad winters before the -PDO even really got going where as those two previous periods were bookended by snowy periods on both sides. But even that is likely an artifact of warming...2018 and 2019 might have both been 20" winters back then and we would be thinking this current dreg period was only a few years v 8. Big difference from a small nudge in the wrong direction from climo.

Are you questioning his legitimacy as a meteorologist?