psuhoffman

There are so many variables it doesn’t necessarily have too. I’m sure there are permutations where we could get both. But everything is related. Every wave in the flow affects the ones after in some way. So wishing for a different solution than the one that lead to a HECS 2 days later is very dangerous. It’s unpredictable what change in wave a does to wave b. But if I see a run that gives me 20” I don’t go getting greedy and wishing for changes lol. I guess I’m more conservative than Ji with my snow. BTW: great to see you posting again. Missed your insight.

We’ve identified the threat for every major MECS level snowstorm that hit our area since 2009 past 10 days. None snuck up on us. We saw the window of opportunity for every one at long range. Dec 2009, Feb 2010x2, Jan 2011, Feb 2014, Jan 2016, March 2018. And we identified some that were really close misses like Boxing Day, Dec 2018, Dec 2020, Feb 2021. No one is saying what any day 10 run is showing is likely to happen. It isn’t. Even if we get a big snow it won’t happen exactly like a day 10 run. But this is simply about threat identification at this range. And we can and have successfully done that over the last 15 years.

Bottom line…you won’t ever see a better setup at this range. You won’t see a better signal for a day 10 threat across guidance supported by all the major long wave pattern drivers and the surface depictions as this. Doesn’t guarantee anything. A long ways to go. But we have as good a shot at a major snowstorm around Day 10 as we could hope for. It’s good enough it has me looking at this crap at 2am when I travel to revelstoke tomorrow! I wasn’t kidding when I said the guidance is showing the best cold enso pattern since 1996. I don’t think it’s even close. Everything we need from a major pattern standpoint is there we juts have to get lucky with the wave timing. And we could have a healthy window with multiple chances to get the hit we want. Good night and good luck to us all!

All you can do is play the odds. Sometimes an outlier solution happens.

GEPS has the threat also probs show 70% of 3”+ for DC.

The snowless camp is now the minority.

I didn’t say you were crazy. I acknowledged I saw why some were more optimistic. I didn’t go that way because in the fall the PDO was hanging at -3! All the examples of weak cold enso years with a severely negative PDO were bad. And there were no examples where a PDO was that negative in late fall and rose to around -1 or higher which was the threshold to open the door to a better result. So I dismissed that idea. But here we are. The PDO has skyrocketed and is heading towards neutral! So it’s very legitimate now. I said in my winter forecast the one thing that could cause a huge bust was if the PDO went through a motor phase shift heading into winter. But I said I thought that was very unlikely. It happened. It’s still a weak cold enso. History isn’t great. But there are some good examples now in the analogs if I was to redo them for the current PDO state. Hopefully we can take advantage. We are definitely due for something like this. Way past due.

January 2016 both the gfs and euro keyed in on the hecs right at day 10. Then had it most runs from then on it. It is possible when it’s a well telleconnected major event to sniff of out at this range. But I’d expect more shifts here because there are more NS waves in between now and the event than in 2016 so more chaos to resolve. @Ji the wave on the 6th will influence the wave most guidance thinks in the real hecs threat so be careful what you wish for. Back in 2015 we had a similar kind of setup and everyone was rooting for the first wave to trend better and it did and we for like 4-7” across the DC area but lost the hecs threat 2 days after. I’ll gladly pass up a secs for a legit shot at a hecs. Those storms are so rare you roll the dice when a shot comes.

The little lights aren’t twinkling

There were two storms like that in 94. One was in January. From DC north got some snow at the outset but not much, maybe an inch. Was like 18-20 at the start but quickly transitioned to sleet then freezing rain and we got 1-2” of freezing rain. Then it was crazy cold the week after. Roads were frozen solid. Week ended with a little 1-3” clipper then warmed up. The Feb storm was pure sleep the whole storm start to finish. I think some snow might have mixed in north of 70 in MD. Was about 4” of sleet where I was in northern VA.

Feb 1994

Please tell me you’re just pretending to be this confused. We still get cold snaps. The planet hasn’t warmed so much that there isn’t still damn cold air in winter somewhere in the arctic and once in a blue moon if something displaces that air into the mid latitudes it will still get cold. But record heat is outnumbering cold 3-1. We are spending way more time above avg than below. But the system is chaotic with short term variance within the long term trend. And yes there is evidence we are getting bigger snowstorms when they happen but they are starting to happen so much more infrequently that it’s still a bad trade off.

Is the bus still in one piece?

It’s really close synoptically to 96. It tracks slightly inside where DC wants it. But what a setup.

Ironically a while back I said I just wanted a period where we had at least a chance because 1996 wasn’t walking in the door. And now guidance shows the best cold enso pattern since 1996.

If that doesn’t work… lol

None of the analogs were snowless.

It did actually snow both times we identified a better pattern last year. But not nearly as much as we hoped for.

We really should still be looking at the general long wave pattern at this point not trying to worry too much about specific synoptic threats yet (except the Jan 3-4th wave) but people are getting anxious and acting like the day 10-15 stuff is day 5-10 or even less…

Keep in mind the first 7 days look like this lol

Except all the snow falls the last 7 days. Normally we see the whole 15 day mean look like that…if the run were to continue it would look better than climo. But you’re seeing a below climo week and an above one. This is a pretty good 7 day mean compared to what we typically see recently

He isn’t the same way there. He really knows his stuff and is funny imo when it’s done in moderation which he does there. I think he uses this forum to vent and cope.

You’ll be surprised to learn the guidance is having trouble pinning down the details of a day 13 threat.