Terpeast

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. 

Flurries

3 minutes ago, MDScienceTeacher said:

How much is dca and Dulles at for the year currently? And how does it compare to average? BWI will likely be over climo.

Not sure about DCA, but after today IAD has 11.7” on the season. 

Edit: DCA at exactly 8.0”

2 minutes ago, JenkinsJinkies said:

The 1960s might be out of reach but there was still a good amount of snows between 2013 and 2016.

That was with a more favorable pacific and +PDO

4 minutes ago, AlexD1990 said:

So does anyone want to talk about the actual storm possibility this weekend? Or more babar talk. ....

Sent from my SM-F711U using Tapatalk
 

All ensembles show a mslp track to our north and west, at least at 6z

4 minutes ago, JenkinsJinkies said:

Next year is a Nina, and those usually last 2 years.

Hard to predict enso beyond the spring predictability barrier, let alone 2 years from now

3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I always collect repeating patterns in my head. The pendulum still always swings imo. 

 

 This is what I've observed in repetition over the last 7 years or so:

The most common place for legit polar/arctic air south of the polar regions has been Russia and China. The wrong side. This has been costly in the snowfall dept because of the pac jet influence and the fact that avg continental air that takes its time is not what gets it done down here. Troughs have consistently not progressed east as fast as they have in the past. I personally do not think this is permanent. It's a cycle that will break. Probably soon. With a warm Atlantic it may be more common for troughs to move slow and pull north easier but imho, we will have periods of legit continental cold carving and parking again. When I don't know. We will also have cold bottled up on our side and Siberia will have some warm winters. It's coming either next year or eventually lol. 

Classic blocking has been absent since 2011. We've had some good blocks but nothing like some of the cycles during the 2000-2011 period. We really haven't had a good cycle in a long time. That's actually normal. There is no doubt some sort of decadal or multi decadal bias with the AO and NAO. Go back thru monthly DJFM data and it's easy to see. 60s great, early/mid 70s bad, late 70s thru mid 80s good, 90s? Lol 1 legit blocky winter with mountains of snow surrounded by epic failure and messy stuff. If 2012 was the end of the blocking cycle, we're prob getting close to another. We'll know in the rear view. 

Monkey wrenches... lol. I don't bother analyzing winter in any detail anymore until November.  Our snowfall setups are fragile AF. Weird things make or break us. And they can do it repetitively. I've read a lot of winter forecasts here and many are incredibly well thought out but they rarely if ever verify the way they are presented except for easy mod/strong enso years. I don't like thoughts getting put in my head anymore because it messes up my observations and expectations. I much prefer to keep an open mind and adjust throughout met winter. I dont die on hills and I cannot make an accurate met winter prediction other than luck and good climo memory lol. 

Volatility... yep, wx is more volatile now. Pretty certain there. Swings are wild and storms in general have a propensity to boom with qpf instead of bust. Other thread can talk whys. I just accept that it's an influence that must be accounted for. This is probably going to save us with a future Nina or northern stream dominant winter. Nina's get some good cold snow but almost always on the lighter side as organized storms like to go west in Nina's. There sure seems to be more juice/enhancment nowadays with northern stream waves. For these reasons I don't fear a Nina at all. If anything I'm super curious about having a classic Nina right now. Especially if we are moving into a blocking cycle....

Booms... when things line up right we can  still go on epic heaters and we certainly will again. We'll probably break the all time single storm snow record here before long. Baroclinicty is often more potent now with Atl SSTs. Things have been out of sync with I95 coastals for a while. Not many nesis storms recently. I have a strong gut hunch some of the storms that make the nesis list in the next 10 years will jaw dropping. Us included. 

These are just some my thoughts based on everything I've seen. I could be embarrassingly wrong. Maybe what has been repetitive recently is the new normal and it gets worse. Idk. I'll keep watching and waiting. Recency bias kills objective thinking. I don't like some of the things I've seen recently with winter wx but I can say the same thing about every decade I've been alive. I don't know what the future holds but the end of big winters and big storms isn't something I'm remotely considering. If anything, the odds of a record breaking blizzard are probably higher now than they were. Just spitballin.

 

 

I think the Pacific cycle will flip soon, within a few years. Blocking, I’m not so sure because we’re about to enter a descending phase of the solar cycle. But the association between blocking and solar is tenously weak at best, so I could be wrong. 

And I’ve also observed that NS waves have been more juicy, which gave us a good January and the PA/NJ/NY crowd a great week this week. 

STJ waves have been too warm because they haven’t been able to sync up with cold air at all. If that changes, though, and we get cold air on our side, and we manage a STJ or phased wave, totals will be truly jawdropping. 

My wag, though, is that next year won’t be it. Maybe the year after.

8 minutes ago, Ji said:

Is this the 5-8 inches nws?

Well, that means we still have a chance 

So far LWX is leaning on the gfs over the euro, but it’s wide open now given recent model performance 

Just now, psuhoffman said:

That crazy fgen zone guidance had over our area yesterday ended up pushing north and they got it. 

That fgen band was about 50 miles further north and much stronger than modeled. I saw this coming as soon as the dual band structure showed up and the north trend started. 

30 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Can we still get a storm like 1996 where it’s snowing hard at like 14 degrees at Dulles? 

Those were the days. Luckily I have a photographic memory so it remains as real as the crispness of it in my head