MANDA

While we wait for our T to 2" of snow across most of this forum the guidance continues to impress over the next 1-2 week in terms of cold. Latest EURO is not backing down on the cold surges coming into the Mid-West, Lakes and into the NE and MA. Some bitter cold anomalies against the coldest averages of the year, i.e. peak climo cold. Expect to see some good ice buildup across the Great Lakes before all is said and done. Snowfall during this upcoming cold is very much in question. Think best chance at something substantial would have to wait until we start to pull out of the coldest of the pattern. For a time the cold looks like it wants to overwhelm the pattern causing suppression of storm track to the south. Not much room to get things to turn up the coast IMO.

Still holding to my .5" to 1.5" tops forecast out my way. Think the WWA of 2-4" are overdone where they are in effect for NJ counties. PERHAPS 2" in spots but the 4" I'm not buying into at all.

Cream puff mentality. So sad.

Excellent summation of the situation. Would not expect much deviation from what you have outlined. For my area I am expecting .5" to 1.5" tops for tomorrow and nothing on Sunday.

Gotta love the 1994 event summary. Frigid air over eastern Canada just continued to push and funnel straight south over snow covered ground. Met up with moisture from the south and snow and ice events were plentiful. Thing I remember most is the frozen solid ruts of snow and ice on the roads for days at a time. With snow, sleet and freezing rain the road crews could not properly clear the roads and everything just froze solid. Was like driving on an obstacle course.

Hopefully we can score something decent late January into first week of February. Just have to be wary of suppressed storm track with potential magnitude of cold that is modeled. Without something associated with a STJ phase going to be hard to get something worthwhile….as in 8”+ storm. My standards are rather high. Cold has returned. Currently 22 here with a gusty wind.

Never got above 41 here today and is currently 30. The torch, thaw, respite from the cold December or whatever you want to call it is over. If the EURO is on the right track and I suspect it is (although over doing the cold) it will take the positive temperature departures for the first half of the month to the woodshed. Only way we get even close to the 12Z depiction of the coming cold is if we can get a decent snow cover down and that is questionable at this time. I'd like to see forum wide depth of at least 6" to maximize the coming cold.

Don’t remember the snow at end of the month or February 85 at all either. If anyone has info on how that cold shot ended….snow??? I would be interested to know. That cold shot had the holy grail of -40 850 temps into the upper lakes. Still remember the maps.

I believe January 85 had a period of bitter cold. That was the year of the Reagan Inaugural. It was so cold the event had to be moved inside there were no outdoor events, including no parade. IIRC windchill was down into the -20's and highs only reached to about 10 during the daylight hours. I remember waking up 7th Avenue for 12 blocks to get to work and it was BITTER and BITING with the wind.

On those last two maps I'll take the under on the snowfall and the over on the temps. I'll also take a bet that the 00Z run offers a vastly different solution.....360 op progs = useless and serve no purpose.

Add to that bitter cold currently over Canada which is not going anywhere fast, a deep snow pack and the coldest time of the year vs. climo and notable cold for a week or two is increasing for the central and eastern U.S. starting early next week.

I actually tend to agree with this assessment. For the balance of this season in my mind we have to kind of root for some renegade type system to break through the pattern and deliver something over 8"+ area wide with a decent coastal type track. Otherwise it is going to be lighter events similar to what we had in December. I had 13.1" here in December. The largest snowfall here was 5.5". The balance of 7.6" was spread over 7 events. Not dissing it, we had a nice snowy run up to the holiday season and a solidly cold December. We'll see what happens the rest of the way. EURO not being shy about first cold shot by early next week.

Totally get that but if the cold comes gangbusters the risk of suppression can be high. I'd add that in any type of pattern models are not going to seriously pick up on storm threats in any believable way until inside of 7 days and with the ways things have been going lately inside of 3-4 days.

I have little doubt a return to colder is coming (I've been on that train for a while) but that ups the ante of storm suppression last third of the month. Could well be we switch to cold and dry. I'm not seeing anything that leads me to believe the STJ is going to get involved in any kind of significant way. A ways to go for sure but if it turns out just cold and dry last third of January I would not be surprised. For rest of this week dry and closer to seasonable than last week. Overall the dry pattern looks to persist for at least another week to 10 days.

Agreed. The favorable "look" though always had some missing pieces in my book. No doubt it looked reasonably good aloft for a time and it was worth watching but some key pieces always seemed to be missing.