psuhoffman

This was exactly my thinking

My thinking on that...but I am totally open to discussion and being convinced maybe it's just a fluke...but perhaps 2022 was slightly snowier here than 2009 and 2013 because when the pattern was "favorable" the TPV was slightly more displaced in 2022 than the +QBO years like 2009...(or years where the QBO was flipping positive like 2013). But the truth is even if we go back to 1950 and include every similar enso year that happened during a deeply -PDO, years like 1951, 1955, 1972, 2002, 2012, 2021, 2023.... NONE of them was snowy. Not a single one was above avg snowfall at BWI! NONE So really the only hope we have here is that the buzz around 2014 is correct. But that year was totally eliminated for me because we were in a pdo phase change that year...by fall the PDO was down to near -1 and by January it was near neutral and by spring we had entered a prolonged positive PDO phase. So since my number one criteria was to only use analogs in a similarly god awful PDO phase...that year is not even an option in my analogs. Maybe that was a mistake? Or maybe the PDO goes through one of the fastest phase flips ever and somehow goes from -3.5 in the fall to near neutral by winter...but I ranked that possibility very low. But again...I'm open to being convinced that decision was a mistake. There seems to be a lot of buzz to that effect lately.

It's a good enso/solar analog, but not in any of the other metrics I looked at. But that is why I am asking this...maybe I am weighting things people think don't actually matter.

Honest question... I really do wonder what you or anyone else's take on this is. I do see these posts from some VERY knowledgeable experts and I certainly see the pattern coming up...and I want to be hopeful...but almost all the analogs they are using to justify the optimism are based on years where the QBO was totally opposite of this year. There are no examples of a snowy winter with a similar enso/QBO/PDO combo as we are in right now. None! So I guess my question is...am I missing something? It is a small sample...maybe the QBO isn't as important in this equation as I am making it. I do lean towards this not being a blowtorch wall to wall...some of my top analogs were decently cold winters...but not snowy at all. Example 2008-9 is a top analog. And look at the pattern late Nov to early Dec that winter...but it didn't help us at all, it was a horrible snowfall year here. Thoughts?

Just an FYI, if you chase to snowshoe WV you really have to stay at the top of the mountain (where the resort actually is anyways) to get the best snow in marginal situations. There are some lodges and motels at the bottom but they often get drastically less snow in these situations. I've even seen situations where the resort at the top gets 12"+ and there is nothing at the bottom. If you are looking for an area that is more uniform wrt snowfall across the area the Canaan Valley up to Davis area gets pretty good snow across the area and it's more uniform since there is a plateau across that area with relatively high elevations. But the top of snowshoe could very well get the most of anywhere in these type of setups.

Maybe, and it's true that some years we get a blockbuster team that runs the table all season as an elite looking squad, gets a top seed and wins the SB. But the other half of the time we get a team like the Ravens this year that have upside potential and don't hit that potential until the playoffs. I think the ravens do have the potential to win a SB if they get it together at the right time. I do think it's fair right now if we were creating tiers to put them in a second tier based on results...but when discussing what teams have the talent to win 3 or 4 consecutive games v good teams to win a SB the ravens do belong in that conversation. They have the talent to do it if they go on a run.

Who do you think are the legit super bowl contenders.... I have in no particular order... KC, Buffalo, Baltimore, Detroit, Philly I think I have to now add Pittsburg to the list...they are better than I thought.

lol sorry I wasn’t picking on you’re forecast or your point. I was more just LOLng at the fact the mid Atlantic is screwed no matter what. Even the colder “snowier” weak Nina +QBO seasons were god awful down here. It does matter for places north of 40.

Look at the results v the Eagles defense since week 4. They've done this to everyone they play. They struggled early in the season when they were implementing a new system and breaking in a couple rookies and several other new starters. They also were missing one of their starting corners. Since week 4 they have shut down everyone they play. Not sure I would be that down on their offense based solely on their performance v one of the best defenses in the league.

Appreciate the thoughts. For the record DC had 3.2" in 2002 and 3.4" in 2017 lol

Don Sutherland said in his winter outlook that 2016-17 was a best case most snowy possible outcome and 2002 as one of his "less snowy" options. For the record DC had 3.2" in 2002 and 3.4" in 2017.

Why does the tone feel so down about last nights game with Washington fans? It's weird...the perspective from Philly is that Washington should feel good about where they are and they are going to be a legit team now v the joke they were for a long long time. They went up against an elite super bowl contender last night on the road and hung in the game for 3 quarters! There was nothing to be ashamed of with that outcome. They showed they are a legit solid team, probably have a good chance to make the playoffs this year, and with a few more additions and some progress from their QB could even become a super bowl contender very soon. I guess I have to wonder what the expectations were, did they actually think they were ready to win a road game v an elite team now?

I think we do see some periods similar. Some of my analogs features some colder periods. 2009 and 2013. But I doubt it locks in all winter like 2014. Also, most comparable patterns to 2014 don’t go as well to the same extreme. That’s another year where we outperformed the pattern some imo.

2022 but the QBO was opposite that year. Also pattern analysis would indicate we might have got lucky some that year. There was a rather small snow max wrt mean right over some parts of our area. We totally maxed out potential, ate all the meat off that bone, and it was still below avg across most of the area But the strength of the Nina and the QBO make that a bad analog anyways. 2018 was really before the PDO went super negative. We got a little unlucky that we got 3 relatively meh snowfall years 2017-2019 right before we entered a historically awful PDO cycle that slammed the door on our chances of a big snowfall winter for a while. The past few examples of similar PDO patterns were bookended by some blockbuster winters. This time we entered a bad phase already in a snow drought. That’s some bad luck maybe. But I could be wrong about how I identified analog years.

I've been super swamped with work and still am, I will try to do a full write up soon...but since I don't have time right now I figured I would at least share my top analogs. I set up the criteria a while ago and have been updating the data as it comes in month to month. This is probably the last update so these are it. Top analogs 1:2012-13 2:2001-02 3:2022-23 4:2008-09 5: 2020-21 Adjusted weighted predicted snowfall BWI: 5.9" IAD: 6.9" DCA: 3.7" Quick thoughts... I set up the parameters I will use to identify analogs and the methodology to weight snowfall months ahead of time to avoid any bias. After last years utter failure I did revamp my process some and did historical testing to verify the new methodology is sound. It was better but as is any long range predictive process it's not perfect. Mainly because using the data available in the fall is not always indicative since things can flip quickly sometimes. For example: if the PDO were to start going through a larger scale phase switch in the next month or two it would bring 2014 into play as a possible analog. I don't see that right now though. I hope I am as wrong this year as I was last!

It's possible, there are no analogs this extreme. You have to go back to the 1800s to find anything close to this level of -PDO. And I doubt we can even take much from what happened then given how much things have changed. Overcoming a hostile pacific was a lot easier in the significantly colder climate of the 1800s. More recently we had an extremely (not to this level though) -PDO heading into 2022 and that turned out "ok". I would take a repeat of that winter in heartbeat right now. It could be much much MUCH worse!

No, but it will probably stay mostly this way until the PDO comes back towards less ridiculous territory and there is no sign of that happening at all. If the PDO were to actually stay in the -3 area all winter I could see this being a no winter year. Not just no snow...but a winter that is just a prolonged October with highs in 60s many days.

My gut says the PDO (and there are various components to that) has been driving this bus recently and much of the forecast failures have been that other dominant predictors are not having much impacting in muting it. It's possible that having this off the charts PDO (as well as a pretty anomalous QBO) could lead to something extreme breaking our way. We're in uncharted territory. But personally I fear the "extreme" event it could lead to would be a ridiculously warm dry snowless winter that makes even some of the recent dreg seem like a 1960's winter. I was actually more optimistic a month ago than I am right now, and I wasn't very optimistic then! That said, I don't have a crystal ball and I hope you are right. And we always could get something like 2000, its actually one of the analogs right now, and it was also a warm dry fall, and for the most part the winter pattern was also god awful...but we got an amazing 7 day period and so it's remembered as a good winter. In reality we just got lucky during the one week all winter that had any chance at all of snowing. But that can happen any winter. We've had some years go the other way, where we probably should have done better than we did based on the predominant pattern but got unlucky. I'm starting to think our best chance is simply to hope we get lucky and fluke our way to some snow with one or two decent anomaly periods within an overall crap winter. I highly doubt this ends up a winter where we have weeks and weeks on end of a favorable pattern to work with. We have to hope we maximize the few opportunities we get imo. And I am not at all qualified to say if we will or not. Most of what I do is simply identify probabilities based on data.

If the PDO doesn’t chill some were in trouble. It’s damn near impossible to sustain an eastern trough with the PDO hanging out around -3.

None. There aren’t really any good enso and PDO matches. 1993 and 2017 are probably the best but neither was even close to this negative a PDO. 2020 is probably the best combo analog with a decent enso and PDO match but not great. I’m not sure how much that matters when the PDO is this negative. It’s off the charts. I think it’s driving the bus.

It’s not hard to luck your way close to climo when avg is only 14”. But I said it was a decent year. It was still below avg snow at all 3 official stations so let’s not pretend it was a good winter. It was just better than most lately but that’s a low bar considering we are in the worst snow drought in recorded history.

I am not sold this is a total dreg no snow year. There are some "decent" years within the set, but I think slightly below normal snowfall is the high end bar unless we just get freakishly lucky. A year like 2022 is probably the best case scenario here. Oddly, and I've mentioned this before, there are still some in the enso thread "rooting" for the collapse of the nina to save winter...when in reality the 3 snowiest winters in the set of 16 similar PDO years I identified were all Nina's! Our expected snowfall actually goes down according to my method if we end up enso neutral!

The high correlation is probably related to the degree to which the PDO has been negative. It's not just been negative, its been historically negative. This was my biggest failure in last winter's prediction. I did weight the PDO, but I found several -PDO years with other matching variables that ended up snowy. What I failed to properly weight was that all of those years were -PDO but significantly less so heading into winter. If we only look at deeply -PDO years, we see its VERY difficult to get a lot of snow in those regimes. A less -PDO has more variability and can even be good for snow in a -NAO regime. But if the PDO is deeply negative it is the dominant factor.

I think its probably easier for NWP to resolve dominant synoptic features like a category 4/5 hurricane or the superstorm in 93 than some of the discreet events significant to our snowfall in winter. A deep enough pressure system becomes a bully vs getting impacted significantly by other discreet variables.

The more I dig into this the more I think maybe its really simple. There have been 16 times since 1950 where we entered the cold season with a deeply -PDO regime, averaging below 1.5 over the previous season. Only once did that season end up above average snow at BWI, and that was 2000 which IMO was a total fluke. The longwave pattern that winter was garbage 90% of the time and we got lucky the one week we had any chance of snow all winter.