psuhoffman

I expect it to trend north some the final 24-36 hours. So long as this is where it is now were probably fine. It’s when DC is on the northern fringe 48 hours out that we’re in big trouble.

No the NAM was never aligned to the gfs the same way the high res euro and rgem are to their parent globals. You don’t see the rgem diverge from the gem much for example. You see the NAM off on a crazy tangent from the gfs often.

Fv3 was about to beat us like a red headed step child

Does anyone know why ncep never developed a high res version of the GFS similar to the Rgem and high res euro (not sure of they discontinued that when the euro op went high res).

For the northern crew, remember the banding near the northern edge is always tighter and underdone. That huge area of light qpf will end up sharper and heavier until you hit the wall. Add in the higher ratios and this is just a generalization but if you are inside the .3 qpf heading into the final 24 hours you’re good. Outside that you risk the fringe.

I’ll let you all know if the storm feels “energetic” as I drive through it this evening on my way back to Seattle for my flight home tomorrow. I wanted to see things stabilize 12z and it seems they did.

I think it depends on the next two cycles honestly. I’ve seen this play out so many times. I feel confident the final 48 hours will feature a north trend in the guidance for all the reasons laid out. The unknown is does it sink south even more before then! And no one knows, the guidance is ingesting better data on a new feature/variable and trends can reverse at any time. The north adjustment isn’t as great as it once was so if this sinks any further south at 12 or 18z then the PA line counties are in trouble imo. If guidance stabilizes where it is right now we’re fine. We do miss plenty of storms up here that max south of us, but we more than make up for it with storms that max north of DC obviously, but when we are fine is if the qpf max is near DC-Baltimore and our ratios along with orographic enhancement puts us over the top. If the qpf max is south of DC that’s when we do get fringed or missed completely and it happens a lot more than people seem to think, probably because there are way more examples when we get more so who cares in the long run is a very fair view but right now at this moment all anyone cares about is this storm lol.

Some people live in different places. And some people are just stupid.

I don’t ever weight the GFS over the euro at any lead. And the NAM is pretty useless for Synoptics because it’s way too jumpy and inconsistent. No way to know when it’s off on a tangent. It’s good for getting an idea what the thermals could be, especially the mids, but only if it matches the more reliable globals with the general Synoptics. Other than that have to use gut feel and historical precedent. The euro can be wrong and if it’s off alone on a tangent there are times to take a gfs solution over it but never straight up head to head.

I like big dogs most yes, but Im happy with a 3-6” snow if that’s what the potential is. This isn’t a hecs type threat.

Ya that sounds about right. So your bar is it has to be something that happens once every 2-3 years or you’re disappointed

How many 6” snows have you had in the last 10 years?

Everyone says “this never happens with rainstorms” but it does. They just don’t notice bc they don’t care.

I like that all guidance is leaving the decaying boundary across our area after the initial WAA thump. Right now qpf is paltry but often that ends up being where the best accumulation is.

This x100! It’s 150 hours. A shift like that is noise. There is no way to know exactly where the sharp northern edge will be due to confluence at this range. The euro still has a healthy storm. That’s what matters.

I’d rather need less of that than more at this point. The more typical error is to over do an anomaly like they. Needing less of a crazy anomaly is a better place to be.

Yup, things have become so fast paced maybe we expect more but the advancement the last 20 years is definitely there. When I used to sit in on forecast discussions as guidance came in at the PSU weather station in the late 90s and early 2000s we didn’t even look at anything past 100 hours. It wasn’t even a thought.

“Only 150”. lol. you’re right but it wasn’t long ago 150 was unicorn fantasy land and further than most operational models even went!

The late January one that started the crazy stretch was pretty cold.

I think it’s going south but it’s not the string out mess it was which is a step in the right direction.

Dunno how it ends but gfs is moving towards euro, icon, UK camp early on. Again, the gfs has been pretty awful this fall and winter season with almost every situation I’ve looked at and compared guidance. Doesn’t mean it can’t be right once in a while and we shouldn’t even look at it, but it’s been worse than the euro and even the ggem and uk across the board lately.