psuhoffman

12/11: 3.8” 1/6: .7” 1/14: .9” 1/15-1/16: 4.5” 1/19: 4.2” 2/13: 6” 2/16-2/17: 4.3” total: 24.4”

I took a look at his blog today, out of morbid curiosity wanted to see how he finally conceded and had either his typical melt down or if he went “I nailed this or that but the pattern never cooperated defiance”. Just for fun. Instead he was holding on to the idea the only reason his snow forecast hadn’t hit us the east hadn’t had the big one but that since everything else has gone to form it’s probably coming. But he was in that stubborn defiant mode he gets into when he knows it’s all going sideways. He likely actually did think this was going to be a big year for him like 2003 and 2010 and he could ride this for another 3 years! He is just trying to get one more month of paid subscribers at this point. He knows how unlikely a hecs is in DC to NYC once into March.

I think you’re talking about the ridge in the central pacific near the Aleutian's right? When people say PNA they are usually talking about the ridge/trough configuration in the Western US. I think you’re talking about the Nina type central pac ridge, which leads to a downstream -pna of course which leads to a SER. But if we can get a -nao in March that isn’t as much an issue. As the wavelengths shorten the nao can force a trough in the east dispute that ridge. March 2018 was the most recent example. Last March the nao did its job, but what killed is was there was no cold at all anywhere and the pacific ridge lifted so poleward the jet cut under and blasted pac puke across. But the nao did suppress the eastern ridge! It saved the ski season in New England! That’s why sometimes we can get snow in March in an otherwise awful Nina year. However, I have my doubts the kind of block we need ever materializes. The guidance has teased it all winter and it’s only briefly come to fruition and both times quickly and inexplicably collapsed. The models aren’t awful. They see the weak SPV, -QBO, and Nino. The logical assumption is -nao. Something is clearly running interference. Maybe the WV from Tonga. Maybe the pacific base state. Dunno. But I’m skeptical.

JB says the hecs is coming

I usually focus on learning how to stop properly pretty fast, depending on the balance of the student. If they can’t stay on their feet more than 10 feet it doesn’t matter much. But as soon as they can glide a bit I start on that. I think spending a lot of time in snow plow is detrimental to progressing. Once you can stop it makes it easy to accelerate learning of technique because you’re more comfortable. It’s very similar to the mechanics of turning. Only you have to commit completely and lean into it. Get all your weight into the inside edge of the downhill ski and dig it in. It’s a feel thing. Once you get it you can feel the friction on the inside of the downhill boot and manipulate it. Put some weight into the edge to control speed. More to stop. Takes several tries at medium speed. Enough to get the feel but slow enough the inevitable falls don’t hurt too much. But it’s worth it because once you acquire that skill it’s applicable to many more as you progress and your comfort level goes way up knowing you can control your speed and stop!

I’ve taught many people how to ski. Liberty is a good mountain to learn and not far. If you ever wanted a free lesson let me know.

I don’t think the 32” the axis has shifted in our lifetime has affected the climate that much.

Speak for yourself. My town has been hit by 2 tornadoes in 5 years and my property sustained major damage twice last summer. No thanks. I’ll take a nice boring summer where I can sit by my pool and not coordinate contractor repairs.

It will snow. But it is still snowing now in places with elevation. Vermont is doing ok. But consider in a warm winter places 200 miles north of us at low elevation didn’t have that much more wiggle room. You adjust things just a bit and they aren’t cold enough in a warmer winter either. And in a tight thermal gradient pattern it’s hard to know what the warming does to the boundary. Wouldn’t take much to adjust the whole boundary hundreds of miles. It won’t matter as much in a colder regime once the PDO flips but I do think warming can explain some of the struggles to our north in warmer -pdo winters.

@Terpeast I just looked. It’s slim pickings. But right now there are 2 places I’d maybe be interested that aren’t crazy crazy $$&. Both around 300k. One is a house NW of Wilmington VT and another a condo unit northeast of Stratton. There is also a “new construction” listing NE of Magic Mountsin in an area that I know gets crushed with snow. But ya yea not cheap and there aren’t a ton of options. There was a run on properties there during the pandemic.

I don’t judge all winters on the same curve. I’d be thrilled with this years results in a Nina. But -QBO ninos have to be held to a higher standard. Baltimore averages 42” in -QBO Nino winters!

Yea I’m in the same boat with the kids. About 1000 ft seems to be the magic number in southern VT. Above that does very well and holds snow. Below and you’ll be disappointed often. There are a few towns high enough to do good like Grafton. But you really want to look for communities outside the river valleys most towns are in. There is a community just east of Magic Mountsin along 121 between Windham and North Windham at about 1500 feet that gets dumped. There is another along rt 9 east of Bennington next to Big Pond. Someplace like that. But you have to wait for a property to come on the market. Or buy a plot and build. But that area is probably perfect for me. Big storms. Not too crazy cold like further north. Very nice summers. Snowmobiling. Skiing. Hiking. Fishing. Not crazy far away.

the area I circled in VT is appealing to me. It’s closer to civilization. Few hour drive to NYC or Boston. It’s far enough south to get into many coastal storms. And there is a plateau with a large area above 1000 ft that holds snow pretty good. Also it’s close enough to Okemo and Killington for skiing. I’m not a huge fan of Stratton or Mt snow, too flat no extreme terrain. The snow further north in VT becomes more clipper and NW flow upslope dependent. Less big storms. They get more snow but it comes 2-4” at a time v getting 8”+ storms. Also farther drive from the cities. If you want snowcover that area in Maine NW of the red line has snowpack from December to April and sometimes well into May. They don’t get as much snow but they don’t get thaws or rain much in winter and are cold as bleep so they hold snow. I’ve been up there in April and may to ski sugarloaf and NW of the ridge that sugarloaf is on has like 2 feet of snowcover still in late April a lot.

Or move up here and commute like I do lol. My elevation helps me some in offsetting the boundary layer warming. It has gotten worse up here but only marginally. For someone used to the DC or Baltimore climo this would seem great still. Even during this last 8 years I’ve only had 2 dead ratters with less than 20”. Or better yet if you want true winters move up to northern New England. My friend has a place in south rental Vermont. He has like 20” on the ground right now. Warming, if you do make sure you factor elevation. The valleys even up there can be frustrating. I’ve been there many times where his place gets 10” and Bennington in the valley gets 2” and is melting already by the end of the day. But yes of you’re going to stay in the mid Atlantic 95 corridor it’s wise to accept reality. However, that doesn’t have to mean worrying about the next storm in a thread about this storm. Or worrying about next winter. What if the PDO flips? I don’t expect it too. It’s probably not going to with a Nina coming. But we can’t say for sure. It’s not worth getting all upset about yet.

lol we go through this every year. Then invariably we go back to tracking things that we know are way way way too far out and thinking at 24 or 48 hours we’re “safe” despite knowing all the rug pulls we’ve suffered over the years inside those leads. Copium is a powerful drug!

They are the first significant ridge for moisture coming from the west or northwest. If you just look at temps on those ridges to the east they aren’t much different and the temps correspond to elevation mostly. But qpf is decreased each ridge because the moisture was depleted by the ridge before.

I’ve mentioned all this before but wanted to summarize into one post in this thread. First of all I don’t deny that snowfall is cyclical. Various cyclical patterns influence. And as they time up with each other we go through up, down, and ambiguous snowfall patterns. This is a down cycle. The mean pattern we’re in matches what had been our two previous worst snowfall periods. I’ve always admitted that. But this one is worse! And the last “up” cycle was worse also. That’s the more alarming thing. From 2002/3 to 2016 we were in a very favorable cycle. Mean pattern for those 14 years… It won’t get much better. But for places south of 40 it didn’t result in the same snowfall benefits as it should have. While places like NYC and Bos went on an epic run that was even better than the 1960s for them we actually averaged slightly below our previous long term snowfall averages! We just were less below normal than we’ve been since! Our last up cycle was actually not even above avg! Of course that’s subjective because that avg is decreasing and I suspect eventually that period will look great by current standards. Examining both the last up and the current down cycle the thing that sticks out to me as the most likely culprit is the PDO. During prior cycles we were able to get a snowy winter in a -pdo. The main avenue to that was a -nao. But from 2001 on we have not had a snowy winter with a -pdo. They’ve gone extinct. This inability to overcome a hostile pacific really muted our last favorable cycle and now it’s making this current unfavorable one god awful! looking at the numbers it does not seem that a +pdo has yet to be significantly impacted in the same way. However, even in a favorable pacific cycle there will be years or months within years where the pacific isn’t favorable. Not being able to snow much in those situations will continue to mute the up cycles imo and will make the down cycles really bad. Problem is we don’t always get a lot of snow in a +pdo. Sometimes the nao doesn’t cooperate. Or we just get unlucky. Or it’s cold and dry. So never getting a snowy winter in a phase we are in 50% of the time is really killing our snow climo compared to previous. This trend has actually been going on for longer than many think. It started in the 80s and got BAD by the 2000s but because we were in a fairly favorable cycle it was masked somewhat. I was on the other side of this debate not long ago. In winter 2020 I took the other side when @RevWarReenactor was sounding like I do now. ATT I thought alarm was unjustified. We were only 4 years removed from a snowy period. I acknowledged it was warming and snowfall was decreasing but I thought then it was marginal and nothing to fuss about. But objective reality the last 4 years has changed my mind. I also did some additional research and looked at the data in a different way and found these alarming trends hidden within the cyclical chaos. The silver lining I guess is that there is some evidence during +pdo cycles storms and some seasons are getting snowier. @Bob Chillis right. Given the increased baroclinicity and warmer waters, we are likely to get an absolutely biblical type storm eventually when things do line up. And we are more likely to get years like 2010 if a couple of those storms hit in the same year. But make no mistake, given all these trends, that won’t offset the fact we will spend way way more seasons suffering through low snowfall. Recent research and examining the data more holistically has lead me to determine I was wrong and our snow climo has degraded significantly more than I thought a few years ago.

The biggest reason we don’t get many land falling hurricanes here isn’t the water temps. It’s that we’re far enough north that the prevailing westerlies usually get a storm before it gets to our latitude and we dont stick out at all so once they turn northeast it’s game over for us. Now…if you’re suggesting the whole circulation is going to shift north… if they shift north so much that we are south of the westerlies hurricanes are the least of our issues

Yes and I wasn’t implying it would work. They have way less posters and they aren’t as serious. But it is nice when I’m in there not to have to remember which thread to say what in.

PA just has One thread for everything. Storms. Banter. Short range. Long range. It seems to work. But they don’t have as many posters.

You’re just wrong here Chuck. We didn’t get less snow because of low ratios. We got less snow because the fgen banding that models had over us shifted north into PA. Guidance showed .4-.6 qpf across DC, Northern VA and MD 12z the day before the storm which was the run used to issue the warnings. The area got closer to .15-.3 qpf. The places that got the banding we were supposed to get ended up with like 10” from .5 qpf. That was supposed to be us! The depth maps were wrong. They showed no one getting more than 4”. Places got 12”+. A huge area for 4+. It was just north of us. The maps were correct for DC but for the wrong reasons. That’s not good science.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m speculating based on observed reality. We’ve had 8 straight warm winters. We’re in the worst 8 year stretch for snow ever across this region. We haven’t had a -PDO snowy winter in 24 years! That used to happen regularly! Was 2016 a tipping point or is this mostly a cyclical thing? I think it’s a bit of both. Hopefully it’s more cyclical. We will find out when the PDO flips.

I didn’t say we won’t ever get a snowy year again. I said imo we probably have to wait for the current -pdo cycle to end to have a shot at a truly snowy winter. This is notable because if you go back far enough in a colder base state we were able to get snowy -pdo years. I predicted one this year. But it’s been a LONG time now since that’s worked. From 1948-2000 Baltimore had 10 -pdo above avg snowfall seasons. It hasn’t happened a since then in the last 23 years! And in reality the trend was before 2000. It’s only happened once in the last 45 years. 2000 was a last gasp anomaly for something that’s gone from common to rare to extinct. So I’m ready to call uncle and say I no longer think we have a legit shot at a snowy year in -pdo years. But not sure how this conflicts with what you said because all those years you referenced were during a +pdo so… As for “blizzards” there weren’t enough to make my point with statistical significance so I broadened the data by lowering the bar. That doesn’t mean the trend didn’t exist for “blizzards”. Several of our HECS storms were very “cold” but the last 3 had marginal temps by hecs standards. But again the sample size was too small to really have statistical significance. A 4” snowfall day is nothing to scoff at. It’s not like I included every 1-2” event.

The precip, temps and higher ratios all shifted north together. It’s a package deal. The only reason those depth maps were right in our specific location was because the storm shifted north! They were way way way off where the snow actually ended up! Had the storm not shifted north they would have busted here too! They have been right for the wrong reason. That’s bad science. Even if you argue you expected the north shift there are better more sound scientific ways to illustrate that then using a depth map that is guaranteed to be way too low where the core snow band sets up. Instead simply shift the zones north. That .5 qpf did verify. But to our north! The depth maps had that qpf over us but thought the snow wouldn’t accumulate because it surface temps near freezing. That’s crazy. I got 4” here and those make said 1-2 and I ended up a degree warmer than they thought! The depth maps are too low. They just are. They’re only “right” when snow ends up low in a location because the storm missed them.

Very possibly. We will see what happens with the mid March period but I’m highly skeptical.