psuhoffman

@Maestrobjwa you made a post the other day saying maybe we will get one huge fluke snowstorm like 2016, and I know you have mentioned 2006 the same way...only neither of those was a "fluke". 2016 had an excellent h5 pattern for 6 weeks in the core of that winter... and IMO it was bad luck that we didn't score more than one significant snowfall. I am NOT saying we should have had 2 storms like that HECS but if you showed me this look and said that would be the pattern for the 6 snowiest weeks of winter I probably would have guessed we would have got more than 1 significant snowfall. But we got very unlucky...we wasted a perfect track coastal storm before the HECS because temps were slightly too warm. Then another threat got suppressed and squashed...then one WAA wave went just south of DC and another storm went just north and there was a perfect upper low early Feb where the boundary layer was just too warm, my area got 8" and DC was cold rain. But if anything the fluke was that DC only got one snowstorm...NOT that they did get one snowstorm. 2006 was similar...the period from Mid December to Mid January was awful...but one of the best winter blocking periods of the last 20 years set in around Jan 25 and continued the rest of winter. THe nina pattern in the pac is evident with that ridge and the lack of an STJ...those features limited the potential here and is part of the reason why we only got one big snowstorm...but the fact that from Jan 25 to the rest of winter looked like that, with that blocking...and we only managed one snowfall of any significance is incredibly bad luck. Given the lack of STJ I don't think expecting multiple MECS level snows was likely but we probably should have had another minor to medium level event or two given that look for so long. My point is not that we wont get a big snowstorm...just that we don't usually "luck" our way to a 12" plus snowstorm in a crap pattern. Those level storms in the cities almost always go along with a favorable pattern (almost always blocking). We can "luck" our way to a 3-6" event in a crap pattern SOMETIMES... but once you get to 8" plus events in DC its almost always with a pretty favorable pattern. Sometimes there is a year where we only got one big storm...but usually that is because either bad luck and it should have been more...or a year like 2000 where we spent most of the year in a crap look but we got a short but excellent pattern for a week or two. I guess my point is don't expect us to somehow fluke our way to a 12" snowstorm in some god awful looking pattern. That almost never happens. For the record a Hudson Bay ridge (current pattern) is not the worst look for snow...its not the best either and temps will always be a struggle in this look...but we have managed some wet snow paste jobs in such a pattern, but they aren't typically HECS level storms...most were moderate snowstorms in the city...some were big in the NW elevated parts of our forum though.

maybe a touch better...but not quite as good as some of the snowy outcome "Hudson Bay Ridge" analogs either...those are also generally warm pattern storms also...but looking through most of those examples that worked the airmass ahead wasn't quite as torched as this one...of course the guidance is trending cooler so if that continues by the time the storm comes maybe it will look more like the better examples. A compromise might work for our area...we had a little bit of snow with some of those 1998 storms but we didn't quite have the elevation to get really thumped.

You don’t see this often at this range

It’s provably going to at least be close. The look is close enough to a lot of our wet snow in a warm pattern “look” but the antecedent airmass might be just a bit too atrocious for low elevations. This might end up like some of those 1998 storms that clobbered higher elevations.

I used 2001 for personal reasons. I remember a couple days before that disaster I purchased my first brand new car, a little black Honda Civic from Tyson’s Corner. I was buzzing that night. New car. Blizzard on the way. I was cruising around breaking the car in listening to WTOP to hear the weather every 10 minutes even though I knew what it would say. Then the next morning the rug pulled out as everything shifted north. But for one night...

A Feb 2010 B Jan 1996 C Dec 2009 D Mar 2001 E Mar 1958

Yes there is a lot more to do in N Conway. The Conway area gets blasted in those New England coastals being so close to the coast on the east face of the White Mountains. The town does get some shadow effect in the valley but still has frequent 12”+ storms and some 20+ which is kinda rare for valley locations in northern New England. Some of the more remote places in the mountains around Conway get obliterated in coastals.

I know you’re busy...and I’ll be having some quality time with the wife...so maybe we should let Mersky take the wheel for the weekend. I fully expect to return to phase 8 bliss... blizzard warnings and talk of new biblical classifications.

The guidance mishandling of the play between the tpv and North Atlantic vortex really mucked things up. That phasing and consolidating into Baffin vs splitting and sliding out forces the canadien ridge too far south and flipped the pattern on a dime. It was one thing...but a BIG thing. Maybe one big thing will break in our favor one of these times.

Southside steakhouse at trolley square in Rutland is an excellent eat btw. Good luck. Have fun.

E was March 58 other than the bust that one was maybe cheating since it wasn’t HUGE at DCA but it was most of the area and it’s a personal fave.

This is Boxing Day... it fits the cohort. But I only included one mega bust in the set and I think Boxing Day actually gave him some snow in Delaware...like 3-6” so I didn’t use that one. I could fill the set with busts and hits and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and that was my point. Pattern is only half the battle. Luck with micro scale features has to go our way too.

Good guess but no. B was a HECS. Jan 96. I’ll disclose soon if no one else wants to take a stab at it.

It shifted quite a bit colder. But it seems to do that partially in response to bombing the day 10 storm then squashing everything behind it. Cold/dry day 11-16. But still a better look rolling forward than 12z was imo.

Good luck to her! I’m going to Gettysburg with my wife tomorrow for the day/night. I won’t be on here for a while. Mersky can handle things while I’m gone.

In fairness the gefs was better day 10-15 but dry. But closer to workable. It was a better trend fwiw.

Now that’s bad.

So no guesses on the storms?

Wrt the mjo and pattern...that doesn’t mean things can’t flip...but that when we do see major pattern flips it’s not purely because of the Mjo. An example is 2017/18. We had a cold phase rotation earlier that didn’t do us much good but when it rotated into cold phases again later as the permanent NAM state was flipping it had the canonical response. But that pattern then went on to persist even as the mjo wave faded and went into warmer phases. We need an actual atmospheric base state change along with the mjo. An mjo wave temporarily traversing cold phases during an unfavorable global base state pattern won’t do much good imo. Those kinds of pattern flips can happen. But the most likely time is late. The Nina like pac response favors such. Think 1999, 2009, 2017, 2018. Not all do but many years with similar pac issues feature a legit pattern change for March. and before the “that’s too late” posts yes yes I know. I’m not saying I want that. Just saying that’s what might happen.

I’ve had a thought on the MJO for a while that I’ve mentioned a few times as to why we often don’t get the response we need when it goes into “cold phases”. The whole “MJO phase 8 is great...except when it goes into 8” thing. Basically I’ve theorized that the main reason the mjo phase 8/1/2 are correlated with the H5 look we want and cold is that those mjo phases are also correlated too and amplified by the types of global patterns that produce those results. So basically a winter here with a cold base state is likely to spend more time in cold mjo phases skewing those phases that way. But when we have a warm base state winter and we wait for an mjo wave to save us it rarely does. Even when it makes it into cold phases the response is muted. It often makes things “better but not good Enough”. I suspect a cold phase mjo is not as correlated to the response we want when it happens in warm base state winters. That is probably because it’s acting alone and not associated with the typical global pattern (canonical el nino) that it is during cold winters. Instead it’s being muted by the background warm base state. On the other hand I think the same is true in cold winters. Over the years when the mjo is about to crush our dreams and JB is spinning to save his subscriptions for another month he likes to throw out examples of warm phase rotations that were cold/snowy. But they are always years like 1978 where we were in a canonical nino pattern and the base state was cold. For the same reason in a year like that the warm mjo wave is muted by the background state. When we are in a warm year and the mjo spikes into warm phases we always torch. This has just been a theory and I never bothered to research and support it. I bring this up because isotherm seems to offer scientific support for this. Isotherm From the NYC sub “Chris, and I've been ruminating on some hypotheses re: the time-lag and distorted response. One issue, in my view, is base-state resonance. Sometimes the MJO/intraseasonal signal is misaligned with the base state, and as such, when it propagates through typically conducive phases, the N HEM response may not be bonafide/favorable due to the misalignment with the background indicators. For example, 2002-03 had a much more classic AAM/GWO and hadley/walker cell structures concordant with a canonical El Nino, and thus when MJOcirculated to 8, we had a more genuine N HEM response.”

I’m just getting caught up on the thread but I think this is saying in a much more scientific way what I just said more observationally.

The mjo in phase 8/1/2 is great...except when it actually goes in any of those phases...then it sucks. I have a thought...not even a theory yet since all I’ve done is kick it around in my head, but it seems to me over the years that when the tropical base state is good...then strong mjo waves in cold phases correlate well. But when we are in years where the base state is crap and we wait for the anomaly of a wave into favorable phases to come it typically doesn’t do much good and the response is muted. I am not saying the mjo is not a causation but that the reason for the strong pattern correlations might be partially due to the fact that cold years that have a pattern correlated to cold mjo phases tend to spend much more time in those cold phases. So it skews the mean. I wonder if cold phases in otherwise unfavorable winters have the same correlation. When we have had flips associated with the mjo it usually happens when a longer term overall change in the atmospheric base state is occurring, like March 2018 when a long term blocking period set in. I just don’t remember lots of instances when things were a hot mess for a long time and the mjo wave into 8 suddenly saved us. Usually it makes it “better” but not good enough. Like I said this is just a thought for now and I could be injecting perception bias here. I would have to study the data to see if there is anything too this.

Nothing you said was inappropriate

Why are you stuck on the mjo projections. This started over you comparing my analysis of the EPS to Will’s and implying they have not gotten worse for our snow chances. Neither myself or CAPE said the EPS was right. Your off on a worthless tangent because your original point was BS.

The first rule of fight club... @stormtracker can we get some old school mortal combat fatalities codes up in here?