psuhoffman

I am amazed that over several of the last few years...when we were stuck in absolutely hopeless winter base states with a status quo where I would take one glance at the mean longwave pattern and say "move on this is absolute shite shut the blinds no hope hell" and people would come at me with "you're too negative, stop being a deb, there is always hope" and of course there was not and we got no snow. And now this year...we are having a pretty good season, its been a real winter, with several legit snow threats and at least one hit for most of the area and analogs say even if we strike out the next week we probably get another good patter from about Feb 20-March 20th and one last chance....and now everyone that was calling me a deb for years has decided to go full deb mode themselves. It makes no sense.. It's almost as if they would rather be pessimistic when there is actually a chance...and optimistic when there is no hope at all.

I was adding some dramatics for effect in my post but...for me March has been my snowiest month over the last 10 years by far so.... and for many in this forum it's been pretty good. 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022 all delivered significant snowfall to at least a portion (I don't just mean me on the fringe northern border) of this forum. As for your climo, I can't say for sure, but remember years back we took a look at coop data near you and established that your snowfall seems to be consistently lower than very close geographically stations. My theory...it has to do with where you are in relation to water, you're surrounded on 3 sides by water and you are at near sea level southeast of the fall line...warmth floods north along the bay and up the Delmarva and you have absolutely nothing to stop it. You also downslope off the hills to your northwest. The same type snowfall gradient happens further south near the Bay but because you have this big body of water separating the communities it doesn't seem as drastic, but snowfall is significantly lower east of the bay then west and that phenomenon kills you because even though the Bay ends just southwest of you, the same impact gets to you as the warmth comes up the bay then continues northeast with nothing to stop it from getting to you. That's my theory, but no matter what the cause, the fact is snowfall data shows you live in a regional snowfall minimum. A snow anus so to speak. Dundalk near Baltimore has a similar phenomenon. The people that live there know they will get less snow than anyone else in the Baltimore area 9/10 times. It's just how it is. You won't change it by complaining about it...you could move 20 miles away and have a significantly better snow climo though if that matters to you.

Timing is ALWAYS key...even in the absolute best setups...because big storms form along thermal boundaries where there is significant gradients for baroclinicity. At our latitude that thermal gradient is very likely to include the rain/snow line! So the big snow is never geographically that far from the rain snow like. If the timing is off in either direction our snowstorms go from snow to either suppressed or rain very very easily even in a good pattern. We even mixed with sleet in 96 for gods sake! 2016 was a 30-50 mile adjustment from dry slotting 95 real bad! We never have that much wiggle room even in the best of times.

The snowstorm we got in Feb 2014. And the snowfall distribution gradient on last nights Euro looks very similar to that storm. Which does not mean "it's gonna happen" but its a good indicator of if such a storm were to happen what is is likely to look like geographically. It would likely be a storm that would likely favor NW parts of our forum. That does not mean 95 can't get snow...but most of the significant storms we have had during a positive AO/NAO favor NW with "more" snow. Feb 2014 was kind of the max end for this type of event...and there was a pretty perfect PNA EPO full latitude ridge in that case, this time we have a departing severely displaced TPV leaving a cold antecedent airmass to our northeast as the driving mechanism. It's not the worst setup ever but it would take a bit of luck to score a big hit.

Had that vortex been at 50/50 it could have been a hecs. That was our chance at a 96 type non Nino fluke. But it’s not bad luck imo, reality is it takes a lot of good luck to get everything 100% perfect which is what it takes to get a hecs in a non Nino

If we don’t get anymore snow I’ll be really close. But I think we will

Let see what the impact is when the pdo is positive.

With how much cold there will be around I think our chances of scoring in the likely Feb pattern is higher than normal given that H5 look...cold will press behind each wave giving us a window of opportunity.

it phases with the NS out in the midwest...that wont work no matter what the exact location of the features is.

I took the 8 best analogs in the last 30 years...threw out the high and low outliers and came up with an over under for snow from Feb 1 to the end of winter for various locations. IAD: 8" DCA: 4" BWI: 5" Manchester MD: 17"

I'm cool with some 4" solid ice solution that glaciates my snowpack to help it last maybe an extra week once the warm up hits lol

I actually don't think it "flopped" this last time...it nailed the general location of that wave from over a week out! It always had the max qpf a little NW of 95. In the end it was too liberal on the SE side of the precip band by about 50 miles but the AI is low resolution and I warned it would smooth out details and wouldn't see something like a sharp gradient. That's where the high res models should have helped but they failed us lol. THe AI should be used to give us a general idea of a storm and it did that...it failed at the details its not really meant for. Just my opinion.

I think the lowlands have a good chance to score more snow this year...if not before things warm in Feb in March. But while it's definitely ended up a little colder/snowier than I anticipated it's still following some of the colder cold neutral or weak enso analogs like 2009 that were identified pre-season. They were "cold" but not particularly snowy. There has been a bit of that...and if 2009 actually is the best analog as I've proposed we actually have got a little lucker this year than we did that year where we had 2 months of cold but barely got any snow until March. Because we've been so freaking warm so often lately we forget how common it is to get cold but not snowy periods...or at least how common that used to be. Because our biggest issue has been its just too warm lately...some have started to think "just give me the cold and I'll take my chances" but that does not always work out.

BTW I am not debbing this threat...was just giving a more accurate description of exactly what that AI run was showing. This is probably our next and last threat for a bigger snow event for a while....after this we are rooting for a well timed follow up wave and likely our high end would be a 2-4" type thing until we reload the pattern sometime in later Feb. Timing up the MJO we are likely looking at sometime between Feb 20-March 1 for that. I don't think the MJO is the be all and its not doing some grand amplified warm phase run that says shut the lights...but our best pattern did time up with the cold phases of the MJO and it will be harder when its partially traversing the MC and extreme west PAC to keep the boundary under us most of the time.

There is a LOT of mixing along 95 but goes to snow for the crazy deform band with 3-6" at the end...before that is really iffy. Sitting right on the 850 0 line the whole time is not usually where you want to be because unless the entire column is exactly isothermal there is going to be a slightly warmer layer somewhere or in between panels. Verbatim this run looks like a 6-12" storm for places like Winchester, MRG, My area...4-8" NW of the fall line out to a Purvellville to Westminster line with mixing and 3-6" along 95 with a lot of mixing until that deform band cools the column... Is it too soon to lock down the exact location of a deform?

11/22/24 4.1 12/5/24 0.2 12/15/24 0.5 12/20/24 0.9 1/3/24 0.5 1/6/25 4 1/11/25 1.5 1/16/25 0.4 1/17/25 0.1 1/19/25 6.5 Total 18.7

You need to know your climo. There are 8 pretty good analogs in the last 30 years to this season and 7/8 produced good snow for a part of this forum in March! Forget the analogs just in the last 20 years 2005, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022 all produced snow around here in March. Many missed YOU because you chose to live in a Fckn snow hole that has a low chance of snow even in a good pattern. On top of that you don’t count snow that doesn’t stick to the road lol. But seriously why does someone who needs snow like you seem too live where you do? You know if you moved 15 miles NW you’d average 10” more a year. 25 miles and you’d double your average! Stop complaining about the realities of your climo and do something. If you need snow and want snow that sticks on the road move somewhere that’s normal because it’s a huge anomaly where you live.

BTW... after re-examining the analogs today...2009 which was one of my top analogs going into the winter...still remains at the top. It's just been a snowier version of that year so far because of that one hit...but when you look at the pattern for Dec and Jan its a really really close match. We had a really nice period of blocking in early January 2009 and it was a precursor to 2010 and 2011... just saying.

Yea...and that's why I said "no thanks" to any southern snow chase...

Yea I remember that...somehow the storm ended up with this huge but diffuse QPF field. It had an impressively large area of snowfall but no real jack zone considering it was a 990 low coming out of the gulf. Part of the problem was it had a messy phase and didnt really amplify as it came up the coast...so it behaved almost like an occluded cyclone instead of the amplifying storms we are used to at our latitude.

Yea the analog set is very nice for our area actually. We are very likely not done wrt snowfall up here...Actually even if we pull out 2014 as the high outlier...the average of the other 7 analog years from Feb 1 to the end of winter for Manchester is 16.1" with a minimum of 11.5". We should make a run at 30" according to the analogs...which while below average is at least close to our median of about 35". "

I had a great time in the 4" of snow I got in November this year...knowing full well it would be gone the next day! I enjoyed the 6" snow I got in March 2022 also knowing it wouldn't last long. It's true that once we get past PD2 might as well get the idea of some run of sustained snowcover out of your head south of 40...its all about one off hits at that point and enjoying them in the moment.

Yup that's exactly where the gradient started...after you get off that ridge the main part of town is on...it goes down dramatically...there is maybe 2 miles between the town and Walmart and it goes from 5-6" to 3" and 3 might be generous. It was one of the crazier gradients I've seen that wasn't caused by marginal temps.

2005 we got 2 snows the last week of February. We got a smaller but decent snow a few days after the PD2 blizzard in 2003. We got a 3-5" snowstorm Feb 25 in 2007. North of 70 in MD got a 3-6" snow on Feb 22 in 2011. Feb 21 2015 we got a 4-8" snowstorm across the area. MD got a 2-4" snow on Feb 22 2021.

There were several small snows in some of those years, but the NW parts of our region did much better. There was a well timed follow up wave in Feb 2018 that gave the area 1-4" of snow. 2022 I got 6" from another example of that and the northern 1/3 of the area got 1-4" but 95 just missed out...I think there was about an inch in the cities from that. I know 2019 was a nino officially but it acted more like a nina and had a similar pattern and we got a 3-5" snow from a boundary wave following a cold front during one of the rare cold windows. So its not a total no hope pattern...but if things do progress the way they look...if we don't score during the window around Jan 28-Feb 2, we are probably waiting until March for the next chance at a big snowstorm.