psuhoffman

Serious question. Do you think a STJ gulf storm with the associated heat that would come with it can work this late? I was thinking our only chance would be a NS wave that amplified extremely far south due to the blocking. Like the 18z AI euro showed yesterday. I know normally we want stj dominant waves but that’s in winter. This late would the boundary layer be able to get cold enough?

At this point I don’t even care about a powder day. But after a low snow season and the last few weeks of extreme heat there was a risk there wouldn’t be much of an April spring season. That’s being alleviated by a cold snowy second half of March.

Looks great to me!

Remember what I said. Give me 2 conserving runs where more than one major global shows snow and I’ll pay more attention. I will accept the AIFS in that.

No it’s a perfect track for a 95 snowstorm if it wasn’t late March. I posted the mslp animation. Go through the KU book. You’ll find plenty similar tracks. Problem is it’s March in a warmer climate. You’re east of the bay. Your ideal track is east of 95 and frankly you want a track that would fringe me. That track is inside for you. But if this was winter with a normal colder airmass that is a perfect track for a big snow along 95. Maybe it mixes with sleet as is common along 95. But as you said it’s not mid winter it’s late March. Thing is 95 doesn’t want a further east track. That wouldn’t help. There is no low level cold anywhere. We want a tighly tucked bomb. We just need it to be even more amplified. 975 maybe! 970? Yea that’s crazy but that’s what it would take to overcome the time of year and low level crap air mass.

Boundary is pretty scorched on the op too

Even for my area it’s 35 during the height. It’s definitely snow but I doubt much accumulation at those temps. Places at or above 2000 feet sure!

But in seriousness @Ji the low is 985 off OC and it’s 41 in DC at the height of the storm. It’s not even close! It would need to be a ridiculously anomalous event to overcome the temps

I’m excited for the possibility of urban street flooding.

There could be some instability in meso banding. We could even see localized thunder rain!

Look at this beautiful rainstorm we get destroyed by heavy CCB rain! Stormy will be very happy

Drought buster

Control has a perfect track rainstorm too

My forecast was worse than yours because let’s be honest snow is what most care about! No one is more critical of my mistakes than me. The whole point of my participation in this thread is to analyze what happened so I don’t repeat the same mistakes. But you’re off base with the model worship stuff. Go back and read my winter forecast. There is nothing about models. It’s based on analog and pattern recognition. I messed that up just as bad as the models did, but that’s my fault. I valued the wrong variables and miscalculated some factors. This thread has had almost nothing to do with models. The long range thread often is. And we probably do rip and read day 15 crap too much. I think this has become a nasty habit born out of the fact nothing inside day 10 ever looks good recently. And I don’t feel like analyzing fiction range nonsense so I’ll engage in posting unicorn maps for fun. But we all know those day 15 maps are not likely to actually happen. And there is good discussion not model based too. Pattern recognition and analogs. And you should just contribute what you want to be disused. If something’s being missed add it. Participate. Add that value. I have no issue with your point of view. I don’t agree with some of it but so what. But why the attacks? You can make your case without them.

And….if I recall you predicted a colder than average winter and it was one of the warmest ever! But no one is attacking you over it because long range forecasting is difficult. Stop being an ass.

How old do you think I am?

That seemed hopeful, no matter how good the resolution gets we don't yet have the ability to measure every variable involved in the equations accurately. We don't have accurate measurements of every inch of the earth. Plus...incoming radiation impacts the equation and we can't always know today what that will be in 5 days, predictions of solar radiation aren't perfect either. No one is arguing with you that the tools are lacking and need to improve...but not sure what the next step is other than continuing to push the envelope the improve where possible one step at a time. This includes models and non model methods. We are still improving analog based methods and now including AI in both of these.

If we can get 2 consecutive runs with the gfs AND euro showing a significant snow then I’ll pay attention

I'm sure he will listen

Holy crap... if it was possible to explain wave physics in a paragraph I would put a lot of professors and text book writers out of business! But... I think I can try to explain the basics of what you are getting at fairly briefly, at least I will try. Ultimately what puts the whole atmosphere into motion is the Coriolis effect. But what causes waves to form within this are inequities in how heat is added to the equation which disrupts the stable flow or air and then the attempts to balance those inequities. More sunlight in one location. Fluxes in radiation. Water temps. etcetera... now pull back and imagine a flow of water like a river, and imagine an object being thrown into the flow of water and how this will cause a reaction in the flow. At first this is predictable as the waves reaction to the object...but as these ripples interact with other variables and bounce off each other it becomes less predictable over time. It's the same concept in the atmosphere, only infinitely more variables to try to predict for on a global scale. Now to really get into this on the physics level we would have to discuss things like Bernoulli's principle and how speed and pressure factor into these equations but I'm not interested or qualified to teach that physics course on here lol. If it could be explained in a forum post there wouldn't be whole courses on this.

I prefer to focus on improving my own methods rather than worrying about the failings of others. My own analog based methodologies failed me horribly 2 of the last 4 winters so I don't feel like throwing stones at anyone. In my own reflection I think I failed to weight the importance of smaller scale cycles on analog selection. Had I done so I would have weighted 1973 and 1952 higher even though they did not match as many criteria that I weighted too highly like QBO. I also need to correctly adjust analogs for the current temperature regime. The last time I predicted too much snow was 2020 and when I reflect on what went wrong there...I predicted slightly below avg and it ended up nearly nothing...looking back at the analogs I selected had I adjusted them for warming I would have seen how bad it might be. Almost all the snows in the analogs came in marginal setups that when adjusted for a warmer climate I would have seen most wouldn't be snow anymore and I was over predicting based on what happened 30 years ago v what would happen in the same pattern in a warmer period now. So not saying using analogs are bad...but selecting the right ones is a trick and its easier in hindsight to see than ahead of time.

He was being optimistic. Nothing wrong with that. I think back then with the advancements happening at that time in models and supercomputing it was fair to think it was possible but truth is after a significant leap in the 2000s we did hit a sort of leveling point where our scientific advancements bumped up against the chaos we can’t account for. Maybe he underestimated that chaos

this shot here is why I wonder how much split flow blocking works in this regime. I know with the time of year it doesn’t matter but the same concept applies mid winter. If that energy in the west was less amplified and the ridge in front was slightly less that system would slide east under the block and 50/50 and be a threat. But there is a tipping point where the ridging in front of every pacific wave is too much and they amplify out west and then try to cut regardless of blocking.

Snow means say weak but that’s skewed by 1996. If you remove 1996 data says they’re all pretty similar wrt snowfall. Weaker ones do have a colder mean though.