Terpeast

Par for the course. Growing up here I remember tons of busts and lengthly periods of cold without snow. It happens.

Not saying it does. Planet is warming, but we will see snow and I think the bad run we had since 2016 is more just a bad run than a steep dropoff in snow climo. Like instead of a -50% hit to climo, it may actually be just -10% or so.

This January seems to be spreading the snow love everywhere where everyone gets some snow. We got ours Jan 6, south got it Jan 10, nrn folks got theirs 2 days ago, and now the gulf coast is getting it too. Blows a big hole in the “south of 40N is SOL” narrative. Love it

Low of 11

Most of the -25 and below air are in Canada, and it is a big airmass all the way from yukon to south of hudson bay. While it isn’t as severe as the one in 1994 and 1996, it is a remarkable arctic outbreak that can and will continue to happen in many future winters. And the good news is that we don’t need severe cold like the gulf coast does.

14.5 and dropping

At around 8-11 inches, we already beat IAD January climo for snowfall which is 7 inches Worst location indeed

The past two winters had all the cold air go to the other side of the globe. Siberia had record breaking cold. This year, though, we’ve had an open feed of cold to our side. The EPO helps bring it to our side, while the AO keeps it here longer. I’ll be tracking the gulf coast storm soon, it will be fun and interesting to watch

Thats more of a backyard thing than the big picture, though.

Houston under a warning for 3-5”, unbelievable. I guess that means we’re still not too far south for it to snow here. Many of us were thinking that over the last two winters

16.2/1.3

Agreed. Its a mishmash of competing influences that makes it essentially an enso neutral winter in the mid latitudes. And I’ll say we had a productive January with the number of trackable events, prevailing cold air, and the number of days with snowcover. Mby 11”+ on the month where 7-8” is climo. If we stay cold for even half of Feb, we may reach climo or close to it.

Not AN yet, but getting closer. I had over 11 inches in January so far, which brings me to 60% of climo on the season. Some places are 75% there

Yep that’s what I mean. ChatGPT’s code is only basic/educational at best, but nowhere near production-level quality. ML is more in my wheelhouse

I suspect that we’re in the bubble phase of the AI hype though. Two years from now, all that froth will dissipate and the so and so things we’d never heard of will fall away back into obscurity while we return to the big boys like Microsoft, Apache, etc.

Saw a few flurries in ashburn, but nothing too remarkable

It really has. I do some of this stuff for a living and there’s always some new thing every week.

For now, this is the best use case for AI in weather. We are not there yet for mesoscale.

Low of 18

Apparently that 2.0” report in Ashburn wasn’t actually from me, it was from a NWS employee. I just so happened to report that same exact amount.

I’m certain, yes. If the cold air boundary was faster and further south, the fgen band would also have been south. DC would have gotten what it was forecast for, and Harrisburg would have gotten much less.

Looks like my forecast did alright for far NW burbs, busted pretty badly along i-95. Mby got close to low end of 3”, probably did reach that if I measured using a snowboard, but I just stuck a ruler on the sidewalk and again on my deck so I naturally got a more conservative number given all the compaction and melting. What went wrong? Simple. Cold air got delayed a few hours, while best frontgen banding was 30 miles NW of model outputs. Tough to get those mesoscale details right even 12-24 hours in advance, impossible beyond 24h. It didn’t impact places like Round Hill or Frederick much, but such a minor shift robbed us in the i-95 corridor. Unfortunate but it is what it is. Nrn folks, this one was yours. Enjoy! I know I did, too!

12/24: 0.1” 1/3: 0.3” 1/6: 7.6” 1/11: 1.3” 1/16: 0.5” 1/19: 2.0” Season total: 11.8”

I’ll be conservative and report 2.0” because that’s what I measured on the deck and sidewalk.