psuhoffman

Again...there will be some snow outside the main band. But probably only 1-3 or 2-4”. The warning 5”+ snow will be in that band. Where it sets up hasn’t been determined yet. Euro and NAM are in the north camp. NAM was south at 0z but 3/4 runs have directed it into PA. Same euro euro. Gfs and rgem/ggem are south and direct it south of DC. Fv3 and icon are in between with a MD jack. Fv3 is trending north consistently the last 5 runs though... You all can make your own guess and decide which guidance you trust. Typically when there are divergent camps a compromise works out. Where exactly you live determines how much you need that compromise to be skewed towards the GFS vs EURO

@WxUSAF 6z 3k NAM pretty much covered the meaningful part since it went to 18z when it’s changed to ice in DC. I didn’t like where it was aiming the snow. Seemed in the euro north camp.

0z eps fwiw

6z euro 10-1 snow starts in DC around 6am. Flips to ice between 12-1 in DC. Northeast MD holds on until 3pm. Problem is it’s still sending the heavy precip to the NW.

Fringed

Yes in years past he was spinning that it was fabricated by urban heat island skewing the data and other crap. Lately he turned to the super nino temporarily heating the globe. But lately he has started to concede that the cooling he expected is not happening as so he can’t deny it’s warmer. Still doesn’t attribute it to CO2

Agree but east based strong ninos tend to overwhelm NAM with warmth. We can get lucky with a big storm like 83 if we can time up what little cold there is with a storm but some were just wet like 98. 2016 was basin wide. Those are in between. Better than east based but not a sure thing like modoki. We could have done better though. There was some legit cold periods in February and March and a few other threats that failed to reach potential imo. Imo the location of the warm enso anomalies is just as important as the intensity. Ideal is a central pac moderate nino. Every one of them was an above average snowfall winter. The further from that the worse it is. Imo a weak modoki isn’t a bad thing but the problem is it’s too weak to be a dominant pattern driver and offset any other negatives and so we are left at the mercy of other factors as well. Sometimes that works out like 1978 and 2015. Sometimes that’s a disaster like 1995. This year is somewhere in between.

Vday

V-day was a very different progression. Much stronger more dynamic system and the slp took a good track but there was too much ridging (one similarity) and mid level warmth. Places in the interior northeast got 30”+ from that storm. The 2013 storm was a similar setup.

We need a moderate to strong Modoki nino. In hindsight I should have differentiated more. Live and learn. But looking at it now...the weak modoki (1959, 1969, 1978, 1995, 2005, 2015) are a mix of bad, ok, and good but all the blockbusters were in the moderate to strong camp (1958, 1964, 1966, 1987, 2003, 2010). Not a bad one in the group!

I didn’t. 850s hang on a couple hours longer than the flip times I gave. It looks like a flip to sleet before snow is likely given the depth of the low level cold.

How were temps before the December 2013 event. This has some similarities to that imo.

That would still leave me about 12” short of mean and 5” short of my median so I want one more warning event in March then I’ll call it a winter. That look early Match btw has some potential. It’s not going to look exactly like the day 10-15 says. If it drops that trough just a little more it’s a good pattern. If it goes the wrong way it’s winter over lol. But we could have a shot at a March event in that general look. I could even see a major phased storm with that PV hanging out displaced to our north if something rotated around it and pulls it in.

Yes. Lately he has backed down in denying there is warning. He now is blaming natural factors for the warming. Still denying human causation.

The snow depth on the 18z euro seems best in line with the qpf that falls when it’s snow looking at the 1 hour precip type and temps. DC flips to ice between 12-1pm. Northeast of Baltimore holds on another 2 hours or so. This looks in line with the qpf that falls as snow

Where I live now got ~18” of snow and sleet according to the local coop. Where I was in NJ at the time got 12” of snow and sleet. I remember helping dig my neighbors car to the main road because his wife went into labor. It was pouring sleet with thunder and lightning as bad as any summer thunderstorm.

@C.A.P.E. @frd JB said this today when opining regarding whether it’s the qbo and strat to bland for the eastern ridge. “SOMETHING ELSE HAS TO BE GOING ON to have turned the TNH positive like this” That seems to confirm my suspicions the TNH is an effect not a cause. Of course it still gets us no closer to a cause. He thinks it’s a combination of lots of things probably. He goes on to say... “A lot of you on my side of the AGW issue do not want to hear this, but perhaps its overall warmed state of the oceans and the planet that result in different reactions than years of the analogs, many of them were years when the planet had a lower base state, That may be a bias on my part.” I’ll give him some credit for admitting he has been wrong finally and that second statement which runs antithetical to his agenda. He seems to be having the same discussion inside his own head that we are on here. Lol

March 1993 is in the pattern analogs. I kind of see the possibility in the ensemble looks day 10-13. It’s a LONG shot but the PV is sitting there displaces snd gets stretched and all with that monster epo ridge pressing on it from over the top all it would take is a strong enough piece to rotate around and dig in and there could be a monster phase in the east somewhere. Obviously getting that is low probability but I see how that progression is possible.

My thoughts haven’t changed. Imo someone is getting 6-10” from this where that plume ends up directed. On either side of that a larger area of lighter snows before flipping to ice. That thump will be somewhere between north central VA and Harrisburg PA imo. Guidance continues to bounce around with the exact location of that band. The goal posts keep narrowing and we’re still inside them for now so that’s good. At least some accumulating snow and ice is starting to look very likely. It’s becoming a matter of how much.

It’s all fake snow. You would know that if you took the red pill!

Yep but can’t blame the pac. That goods great day 8-12 but doesn’t help much because the SE ridge wins. Something else is driving that right now. There are some snow hits day 10-15 in the eps. 2 absolute HECS solutions. Several others decent hits. So there is hope but the look is mediocre.

I am not getting sucked into another stupid debate with people that either don’t know what their talking about or have an agenda. Tropical forcing east of the dateline is the best location and most correlated to cold for us. Forcing there is basically mjo phase 8-1. So I don’t know what he is on about. If he is only making the point that right now this year it’s not helping...he might have an argument. Of course maybe we should wait until after Wednesday to decide if it helped or not lol. But there is still a ridge either way. If he is trying to make some broad assertion that forcing east of the dateline is bad he is full of bunk. He said around the dateline...that’s more ambiguous as that’s phase 7 which can promote a SE ridge. But a modoki often promotes forcing just east of there. There are also 2 subsets of modoki. Weak and moderate. There has only ever been one strong Modoki 1958 and it also behaved like a moderate so we can probably lump them together. They both evolve similarly with genesis in the central pac and propagate east vs tradition nino which originate off the west coast of South America and propagate west. The difference is moderate to strong ones tend to take on basin wide characteristics for much of the winter before fading west. Weaker ones might take in basin wide characteristics for a time (this year did for about a month) before quickly fading west in January. All the warm water is now centered in the central pac like other weak modoki years. Some have started claiming the moderate to strong ones aren’t really modoki because from December to February they look basin wide. That would make years like 1958, 1964, 1966 1987, 2003, and 2010 not modoki. Whatever Years that were weaker and fit both modoki definitions were 1969, 1978, 1995, 2005, and 2015. This year fits in the weaker group. Notice this group has a much higher fail rate with years like 1969, 1995, and 2005. Even 1978 and 2015 weren’t blockbusters. Simply good winters here. The blockbusters were all in the other group! This is something I’ve been researching lately and obviously would have been good info 3 months ago and would have tempered my expectations some! But the fail of the weak modokis don’t come the same way. 1969 had a problematic pacific like this year but enough NAO that it crushed New England. This year is like 1969 without the NAO block so they got screwed. 1995 was a train wreck in multiple ways. 2005 didn’t have any blocking early and only mediocre late. But the common thread is the weaker modoki are vulnerable to interference from other pattern drivers. Moderate to strong modoki ninos overwhelm the pattern and every single one was a blockbuster winter for the mid Atlantic. I was going to save this for the winter post mortem when it’s over but it’s pertineng to what you just posted. I’m not interested in this stupid labeling debate going on within the weather community and I’m even less interested in how some are playing games with the alternating definitions.

Eps fwiw

Relax jma aims it south

First of all the fv3 actually is predicting about 8” in DC don’t exaggerate using that flawed snow map. The snow depth map is much more accurate. The kuchera has weird banding issues and the 10-1 has ice issues the depth one seems to match up better with what it is actually showing if you do the work and look at temps at all levels and precip and figure it out yourself so this is a better idea what it’s really saying. that’s still really good...6-9” around DC 10-12 Far NW but let’s not exaggerate it any more. It’s bad enough! But is it really that far off from the euro...both imply the change from snow to non snow is around 18z so just about all this precip before is snow. The only difference is the euro aims that moisture feed slightly NW of the FV3. At 72-84 hours that’s not a huge difference but since we are right in the area where that relatively narrow band is going to hit it matters big to us! But look at them...not that different euro 24 hour qpf ending 18z fv3 24 hour qpf same time they just disagree where that banding is aimed by about 40-50 miles. That’s all.