Terpeast

16 years between 1987 and 2003, yikes! Thank goodness we had 1995-96.

-PDO relatively pedestrian and close to neutral

Halfway through this winter and a 4th night in a row in the single digits with snowbanks as high as 5-6 feet, I am actually the most optimistic in a long time about the future of our winters. This winter and last winter, we have had a lot of cold and we’ve seen snowstorms to the south of us, and these aren’t winters that were supposed to be favorable going in. I know we’re jealous of Charlotte right now, but hear me out. Growing up here, I’ve seen plenty of misses to the south and bitter cold like this. I’ve seen both stretches of frustrating winters and blizzard bonanzas. We’re also in the middle of a long term drought. None of this is new. It’s as familiar as when I was in grade school. When (not if) the drought breaks and we get another winter where favorable patterns set in, we will get hit again… and hard. I guarantee it.

Makes me think we went through a bad streak of very warm winters, and now we’re just getting back to normal (albeit a couple degrees warmer than the old normal)

And that’s not a suppressive look like we have now. Still a pna ridge but not so tall that it pushes storms so far south

Look at raleigh/durham though

Yep, both ai and nwp euro ens show brief connection then right back to cold. We don’t even go AN that much on the “warmest” day, and 11-15 day forecasts have still been biased too warm

Still a chance. Euro AIFS ticked north a bit. Probably noise, but we’re not out of that one yet

For now that’s not supported by the aifs ensembles, and euro has a well known bias of dumping too much energy west. Least likely scenario

Euro ai takes multiple shots at us. At least one will hit, imho

Both cmc and euro want to bring a clipper next friday, showing precip here on the southern fringes

It would be, and probably the worst case scenario in terms of impacts. With 2” liquid already frozen on the ground, a rainer would induce melting and flooding then a massize refreeze when cold rushes back in.

Looks like next week's event is a potential C-2" event for DC metro and south. As I said before, it's a minor event with minimal upside. Feb 10-15 window is the bigger one to watch, but starting to worry about too much ridging ahead of it. Hopefully the strong block should keep it south/wintry for us.

Low of 4

Drove around today and the snow banks and piles make it look like we just got 20 inches. The snowpack will harden and stick around for the rest of the winter. I’m certainly not gonna complain about this winter.

Verification scores coming in for ai-gfs and its ensembles, ai is doing better than their dynamic counterparts. But that’s not saying much. I’d say its middle of the pack on par with op euro and geps, with ai euro leading the pack.

Agreed. Also if this weekend’s coastal ends up weaker than currently forecasted, way end up with less confluence to the NE and allow next week’s minor event to come back up north. Again, minor is the operational word. Upside was never very high with that one. The Feb 10-15 window is another to keep an eye on.

Fair. I just never really bought into the northern track because I wanted to wait until it got within 100 hrs. Sure I got excited for a brief moment when euro shifted NW, but I wanted to wait until it showed the same shift for 3 consecutive runs. It didn’t this time. Next week is a weaker event that goes on a more W-E trajectory, a different type of event that isn’t really comparable to this weekend.

We may get closer to seasonal, but still cold enough to support snow given the right storm track.

Low of 5 right now, could go lower

For now it looks like a minor event just like it appeared a few days ago, but I'm waiting until D4 lead time to make any statements with confidence about it. That's when the models seem to be locking in the best.

Also I'm not buying the warmup shown by some AI models in Feb (the warmest ones have been the worst performers). I think we remain cold for at least the next 2 weeks, probably 3. We'll get our chances, some of which the models may not be showing at this time.

Wild that y'all are giving up on this event next week. There's still plenty of disagreement among models, and most give us something. That coastal miss this weekend really got to you, huh?

Euro AIFS shows a weaker and further south track than the AI GFS.

LWX casual mention of the event next week. KEY MESSAGE 3...Chance of light snow mid next week. KEY MESSAGE 3 DESCRIPTION... A shortwave-trough is fcst to dive from the Northern Plains into the mid Mississippi River Valley Tue afternoon into Wednesday. This feature is then forecast to become a closed low and induce sfc cyclogenesis across the Southeast. The Canadian model shows the weakest and most southern solution while the ECMWF the strongest and a more favorable track. This latest 00Z EC solution is a significant break in continuity to prior runs that showed a weaker solution and snow amounts between a trace and one inch. The EPS and EC AIFS suggest that the deterministic Euro is likely overdone and show a much weaker solution. The EPS shows the probs of 0.01" of QPF in the 60-70% range and of 0.1" QPF in the 30-50% range across the area in the 12Z Wed-00Z Thu time frame.