Terpeast

@brooklynwx99 My best guess as I’ve said in another thread is that the pac jet was shoved northward by the marine heat wave off Japan. 

Physically it makes sense to me. Heights increase above that heat wave, jet goes over instead of under, and breaks up any aleutian low before it even forms. 

Our best winter week this year was actually due in part to a La Nina-esque pattern with an aleutian ridge that nudged poleward. 

5 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

That Modoki Nina gave me a White Christmas and a 2F afternoon high on Dec 23.  I'd take that and run over this POS nino winter.

Where was that? 

All I got was a flash freeze where I couldn’t even open my car door until I spent 20 minutes melting it with hot water.

This Nino winter gave me 12 days worth of sledding and snowman-making days with my daughter. Had the time of our lives, and we didn’t even have to travel to see snow.

Cue the Kevin shark tank meme…

3 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

PDO definitely has something to do with it, just thought the Nino would be a bigger factor in forcing a +PNA

I thought so, too, when I did my outlook. It looked as though the pdo was becoming less and less negative, and was sure the nino would win out. 

30 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

this is positive, no? you'd think you'd keep the extended jet here, but it is poleward into AK... go figure. then it looks negative after, so the retraction makes sense

Could the marine heat wave off Japan have anything to do with this? 

If it’s not MJO4, if it’s not EAMT, then what…?

Thinking it through physically, it kind makes sense to me that the marine heat wave could be pushing the extended pac jet poleward so it goes over a la nina instead of under as it would in a canonical nino

24 minutes ago, Ji said:

Maybe we'll luck into a positive pdo winter. Or maybe that Dec 22 pattern this time around gives us the white Christmas

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk
 

It’s gonna have to snow early and often if we’re going to avoid another ratter. I’m talking between thanksgiving and new year, maybe first week of Jan. Then it’s lights out.

1 hour ago, Ji said:

Does modoki Nina mean anything?

2022-23 was a modoki nina.

This time we won’t have as much blocking as we did last year. 

As you said…

I’m going to work on racking up points to get my family a free flight out west next winter. 

7 minutes ago, CAPE said:

The weeklies have been fucking with us for months with these favorable h5 Nino-ish looks. With one or 2 brief exceptions, it remains a unicorn. But yes come late March, we will probably get a blockbuster slow moving Miller A with copious amounts of cold rain. Maybe we can all meet up At Canaan.

As long as we have a background -pdo state, these canonical nino looks on weeklies shouldn’t be taken seriously. I want to see the pacific flip first, whenever that may be. 

1 minute ago, 87storms said:

Yea, that should probably be KMLWX.  He'll know when it's time.  It's probably a little early lol.

Usually starts late april early may, no?

I’m overseas the entire month of April so I get to skip the most boring part of the year 

6 minutes ago, uncletim said:

Definitely stay out of the Bennington/Manchester valley in VT. Not that they don’t get more snow than us, obviously, but it would be massively frustrating to me to look down at brown ground and know that 5 miles away and a thousand feet higher there is a 2 foot snowpack.

But it’s pricey. Pandemic induced massive changes in the real estate market, particularly in sourthern VT. Anything decent up on the plateau closer to ski areas is extremely expensive, especially in areas closer to Manchester, like Winhall, etc. The situation is not so severe in NW Maine; non-waterfront is still non-crazy, pricewise. Choose properties carefully - Rangeley area has a severe labor shortage, so building or major renovations are on a multi-year waiting list. I suspect the situation is similar in VT. 

I thought DMV was expensive, but VT isn't that much cheaper. Out west, same.

6 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I do it when its dry, but once you spray and the insecticide dries, if it rains a few hours or a day later its fine.

Awesome. Just ordered

28 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I dread bugs every year. I use this. Spray it around the perimeter of the house- along the foundation, door sills etc with a garden sprayer. I start in mid March and do it every month or so. Has a long lasting residual. Once it dries its not harmful to humans. You can spray it inside- can be used for bed bugs. Good shit.

https://www.diypestwarehouse.com/products/suspend-sc

Thanks. Should I spray before it rains, or when we have a dry forecast coming up?

11 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Alright, so given all this...if any of us is a little more fstatistically about out future snow prospects, can we like...not give out weenies and say "Stop posting about future winters". This is a reality I already halfway accepted given how bad it's been. I mean even without digging into it like you have...just the eyeball test shows that things just don't look like they used. It's just gonna be more difficult to snow, and it's a reality that we don't have much choice but to learn to live with (unless we evidence to the contrary in the coming years). 

Like I said, it's not something any snowlover wants to accept, which is why you get the reaction you do even when you spell things out in detail. But I mean...the way this winter went oughta tell ya. All we have for now is the memories of the snows we've experienced, and perhaps one day in a better cycle we get another memorable winter with an epic amount of snow--and we'd better enjoy the heck out of it! And in the meantime...enjoy what we get even if it's smaller than we're used to. Just gotta adapt!

Serious question.

Have you considered getting a job in the ski industry? 

Not sure if it's viable because ski resorts are suffering all over and may not be hiring like crazy, but have you looked at those opportunities?

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

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. 

I was looking at that first circle over southern Vermont as well. Mainly checking Zillow for real estate prices (casually), but couldn't find a whole lot of listings that aren't down in the valley. 

Not that I'm planning to move in the short term - I'm staying put for now. There are more important things in life than frozen ice crystals falling from the sky... like friends and family, daughter gets to see her grandma once a week, etc. 

But if my mom moves out of the DMV, or daughter leaves the house after HS, or otherwise a strong reason for us to move, that's one area I'll be looking at. Or go out west. 

Only problem is... by then, I may be too old to shovel 3 feet of snow. Unless I keep hitting the gym and stay in shape and not allow myself to let go.

There was a centipede on my wall, and used a large sheet of paper to carry it outside. That thing was fast! I almost fell over because I had to sprint to the door.

I dread the bugs this year...

I wonder what the max totals were in that storm. 18.7” at dca and 20” at bwi seem low given the huge impact. Maybe it was the rates and wind, and the element of surprise? Or was there a local max DC and Southeast? I know IAD only got 16” so they couldn’t have been anywhere near the jack.

7 minutes ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

The 12z GEFS looks interesting for this period.

Doesn’t look cold enough to me, but the Op is colder. Doesn’t rule out something interesting 

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Early March h5 look has improved some on the last few runs of the GEFS, with a temporary PNA ridge going up and a wave tracking east under a Hudson/Baffin ridge. Might be a chance here.

Gfs op run at 12z is surprisingly cold at the surface
 

[[moved from other thread so the mods don’t have to]]

I’m ready for spring, tbh. Just waiting until March 1 to grade my temp and precip outlook. If it snows in march I’ll take it, but if it ends up being 60-70 degrees then all the better. 

48 minutes ago, SnowLover22 said:

Also,

The historic 09-10 winter, 2016 one storm wonder, and the winters you mentioned all had neutral to positive PDO at times. That is one of the main differences between 09-10 and now (the PDO). We do not actually know if that historic winter would have worked with a strongly negative PDO. 

@psuhoffman

 

 

2010 was a brief interruption of the negative pdo cycle when it briefly peaked positive. I thought this Nino would do the same, but the pdo stayed negative. 

Bottomed out at 19. Surprised to see that some snow cover survived in my front and back yards

2 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

Long range is always volatile and unreliable. Models nailed most of Dec/Jan in general from way out in time. What really stung this year was a combination of holy grail expectations and applying that to all long range guidance. When we thought the upper level mean pattern out in time looked "classic nino" there were still plenty of problems lurking. Models were never cold and snowy under the hood. The only period that lit up 10+ days out with both snowfall and analogs was Jan. Other than that it's looked pretty bad to me. 

I keep saying this but if we want snowfall, there is only one reliable feature that's a well placed/stable -AO. It can and will snow in any enso state when the AO is below -1. Conversely, an AO in excess of +1 can eliminate snow in any enso. 

This speaks for itself imho. Not hard to see the correlation this year lol

 

Something that really stands out is how bad models missed the abruptness and magnitude of the + moves from 10 days out. That's a big reason we spent so much time in a near shutout pattern. When the AO skyrockets, it's at least a 2 week reset before things can get cold and line up again and that includes going negative first. 

I'm thinking this winter's underperformance isn't as complicated as first thought. The entire big winter thesis beyond enso was blocking. Dec was a big warning shot that wasn't happening as expected. Then things just kept repeating. If the AO stayed negative in Dec like big winters, those wet southern waves may have felt a lot different imo. 

The “fly in the ointment” was extra strat water vapor from the HTHH eruption. This kind of eruption never happened before, and it was thought that strat cooling and a stronger SPV would occur as a result. But no one really knew. Maybe this was a competing influence vs the -QBO and propensity for blocking, resulting in these +/- back and forths. Just speculating 

2 hours ago, Fozz said:

I find it incredible that many places just a few miles from that band didn’t just get 4-5”, a lot of them got less than 2” while they were just miles away from 6-12”.

That has to be infuriating.

Yeah I saw that… brutal. I feel better about my 1.5” today where I am, instead of being practically across the street from that band

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

I blew out my knee sledding with the kids lol 

Hope it's alright! lol

Honestly I can't really complain. I'm at between 13-14" on the season and been able to go sledding half a dozen times with my daughter, with a couple of jebwalks while it was actually snowing. She's a weenie like me, and we have a great time together out there. Lots of father/daughter moments made. I couldn't say that last winter.

Yes, I'm dissapointed that we didn't get a HECS, and this being a Nino year, we probably blew our shot at one of those and it'll likely be years before we get another loaded chance. But from where I'm sitting, I can't complain. 

Ironically, most of our snows came from nina-like northern stream lows. I'd be THRILLED if I got 14" in a La Nina winter.