RitualOfTheTrout

9 hours ago, Rd9108 said:

Ehh I've stayed away from this one since it really hasn't looked good except the RGEM. Most likely a 1-2 storm with the really good bands missing just to our south. Who knows maybe nowcasting moves things north but I wouldn't bet on it. Good to see some winter weather regardless. 

1-2 seems reasonable. Ratios should be good to maximize what we get qpf wise. It does seem like the trend has been very tiny increments of improving as we get closer.

If that continues maybe we can bump up to 2-4.   Little sarcasm there. I feel like I've put a lot of energy into tracking this. Cold snow on snow in the teens and 20s is hard to beat in my book so I'll take what I can get. 

26 minutes ago, Burghblizz said:

Snow Squall Warning for most of Butler and the western half of AGC right now. Imagine that will transition east. 

Looks like 1-2 inches here overnight. Hard to tell for sure with the blowing, but at least as much on the ground as the storm last weekend. 

Another batch overhead now. 

59 minutes ago, Burghblizz said:

I think it’s the right call. But it could have been made a day ago. 

I agree, traffic after one of the events is a nightmare in good weather. Can you imagine how many people would get stuck? 3ft snow and 65mph winds, cars might be drifted over in the lot. You know there'd be some contingent of woefully unprepared fans too. 

Temp is dropping pretty quickly now, lat or near freezing. Looks like an area of light snow moving through shortly. 

15 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

It’s January 13th, no reason to say winter’s done.  Will we reach seasonal average maybe not, but there is a ton of time of decent storms.  There are always lean years.  The last decade caused averages to go up so that obviously means winters were better than normal.  We’re paying for those now.  We’ll get ours again, and if you don’t believe that, then I feel bad for you.

We basically said the same thing.  I fall into that trap myself sometimes, looking ahead on the models you get in your head January is over, but in reality it's only half way through. Plenty of time for something to come up in the medium or short range too. Sure you can identify favorable longwave patterns from 10-14 days out for when a storm might come together, but in reality its rare a storm past 7 days happens as modeled from that range. 

1 minute ago, Rd9108 said:

Ride the snowiest model 

 

Honestly, to put a positive spin on it, rooting for the first wave to be the focus and come in stronger is our best hope to steal a few inches. Thats been the trend, this is more of a Monday night "event" now because of that.

I wouldn't totally dismiss the end of week storm either. We need the NS to dig deeper and get the storm going below us. Still to many variables to write anything off. 

After that, the cold look breaks down, but late Jan / early Feb still looks like we will have a reload of a workable pattern. By then a "great" winter is off the table if we fail to that point, but a good storm or two and getting close to average not out of the question. Backloaded winter given Nino climo was always the expectation. 

 GFS moved to Euro, CMC seems headed that way too. 

1 hour ago, Rd9108 said:

So far today it definitely has trended worse overall. Now let's see what happens when the cutter moves out and if the models can resolve any minor details. 

Not a great day in general for snow chances. Hopefully we have some good changes tonight. 

Looking like an all out blizzard for the game at Buffalo. Can't imagine those snow rates with the Arctic air fetch over record warm lake Erie. 

37 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Nothing is set in stone yet. This is all gonna depend on the orientation and interaction with the TPV. 

Agree. Usually a compromise / blend of guidance works best. Just depends if we are like 60/ 40 GFS camp or Euro. If its Euro we won't be as happy. 

That said watch Euro come in with some phased bomb now. 

1 hour ago, TimB said:

Garden variety cold without snow on the ground. Nothing even interesting like -5 in the middle of the afternoon like the Christmas 2022 thing.

If you want snow you generally don't want severe cold anyways.

Not much clarity overnight, same possibilities still on the table from medium impact snowfall to nothing. All the ops and ens suites seem to be ocilating within that goal post still. 

3 hours ago, jwilson said:

It's ironic that the GFS and Euro have completely flipped positions.  The Euro went from amped Appalachian spine runner to suppressed, and the GFS went from suppressed to phaser coastal.  The Canadian is much closer to the GFS.

The Euro hangs back this fairly large piece of energy into southern B.C.  It eventually becomes the dominant piece of energy but stays lagged behind the SS and doesn't even drop down.  It rotates around the TPV in the NS and washes out before popping much later.

Going back, it looks it's because the GFS raises heights in that NW Canada area and cleans out an LP, some of which disappears, some phases into a low over Russia.  The Canadian and Euro both hold a piece of that energy and drop it into NA and strengthen it.

The GFS has continually weakened that piece.  The Canadian just did weaken it significantly between 0Z and 12Z.  The Euro has, unsurprisingly, strengthened it.  This could be the key cog in the entire mechanism.  How that piece of energy resolves, if it exists at all, etc.

We'll have to see once the cutter completes its cycle this weekend.

It is odd they switched places, hopefully not a case of GFS being late to catch on.

Thanks for the analysis, haven't looked at the overall pattern vs trends. Will be good to watch that BC LP for early hints on 00z runs. 

26 minutes ago, blackngoldrules said:

I feel like maybe the GFS handled the last storm better than the others, so maybe some hope for early next week? Would like to see the Euro catch on to it as well then maybe it'll be game on. Still time yet like everyone is saying. It'll be interesting to see the upcoming trends on this one.

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Its certainly not like it used to be, if it was the Euro vs everything else you could still weight it 70 / 30 Euro. GFS is way improved now, so at least a reason to be optimistic.

The other good thing, if the GFS is more right, we have room for an earlier phase / more amped solution. 

11 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Don't jump off the ledge yet. Still 3/4 days out from anything. Yeah the trends were terrible today with the risk of suppression, which makes sense. I'm sure it's gonna look totally different at 0z and 12z tomorrow. 

That's about the only certainty you can get from 12z. Pretty much all solutions from medium impact snowfall to nothing. Glad I don't have to bet on this cause I don't know which way I'd go. 

4 minutes ago, TimB said:

Pretty strong signal for a ridge beyond day 10. If next week doesn’t pan out we could be in dire straits by the end of January.

I wouldn't say dire straights. That might not be a super warm look, and signs the blocking wants to reload. I get your point though, by then we are entering the last 3rd of winter needing some big wins to hit climo.

2 hours ago, Rd9108 said:

Euro is doing what is most likely gonna happen and forming the wave on further east most likely on the arctic front. Unless this amps up from a phase I just don't see this being a threat for us. Maybe we sneak an inch or two atleast but I wouldn't expect much more. Now the models this far out are gonna change so who knows. 

Pretty chaotic with all the shortwaves in play, honestly pretty low ROI tracking right now, at least until the big midwest low does it's thing. Just glancing at the different runs at 500 there are some pretty big run to run changes. It is a weather discussion board though, so if your here, what else are you going to do right? 

50 minutes ago, jwilson said:

Agree now.  We're starting to see some signs as to how that wave on Monday/Tuesday can be suppressed.  The confluence is trending in flatter, and the energy on the 12Z Euro and 18Z GFS are more separated / disjointed.

How can we win?  Well, we need that initial southern wave to outrun the confluence and get ahead of it, which to me seems less likely, or we need the energy to really consolidate and fully phase, creating a bomb that is timed right and pulls west.  It happened on previous runs where the NS energy and SS energy phased properly over say Missouri or Arkansas instead of sitting back into western Nebraska.  Between the two solutions, I'd say the latter is more likely right now.  If the pieces of energy remain separated, we get that washed out, squashed s/w that jettisons out to sea or even bombs too late.

I agree, I think we are all but assured to have suppressive flow for the MLK threat. I was really hoping we didn't go from two massive midwest blizzards to a sheared out mess, so hopefully the second option comes to fruition and we get some phasing. It would be nice to get a couple inches on the ground to go with the cold. 

Flow behind the big cutter not a trajectory to get us LES, more west or south west. Buffalo NWS talking maybe big LES event, so we can watch it snow on TV during the Steelers game at least. 

11 hours ago, Ahoff said:

It seems pretty rare too to get a polar shot of air without some snow with it.

I'm wondering if after this next cutter we get some better snow action on the back-end with some true arctic air coming in over very warm lake waters if we can get a favorable trajectory and a little embedded shortwave to help mix things up. 

Storm after is till on the Euro, and GFS seems to be at least showing the possibility of something in the same time frame too. 

13 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

I'd say if we see any meaningful shifts they happen in the 0z suite. From just my weenie eyes it looks like the shortwave is coming ashore right around now.

Yeah, and today's system will on the way out too. 

5 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

There's a reason I blocked him and his post made it clear. Anyway we still have another storm to get through before our "period". So anybody punting after two sets of model runs are crazy. Here what the EPS had today. Granted it had a +NAO but this is not a signal for no possible winter weather. 

 

You mean -NAO? Pretty beefy ridge over Greenland there.

Biggest issue I see is that beast of TPV lobe just under Hudson bay. That is going to make it hard for anything to amplify without get shredded. Lift that north or further east and you have some room for something to dig and amplify then run into that and get pushed east before it can cut west of us.

20 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

Looks like we’ve lost our window for a good storm 

Which storm are you talking about and why are you saying that? Guessing the Tuesday storm after the Friday / Saturday deal? Still too early to say one way or the other with several features that won't be resolved for awhile.

Starting to think for the next one best we can hope for is similar to what we got today. Quick front end thump, although there isn't a high in as favorable of spot either, it's sliding off the coast on approach and the low center may be closer to us, which would in theory boost WAA. Getting to short of lead time for a big shift SE at this point, unless the idea of jumping to the coast comes back.

43 minutes ago, TimB said:

Only 14 for those of us who don’t pay for pivotal 

Nah, Tidbits had 6z / 18z Euro free, albeit delayed out to 90. Your'e good. 

7 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Also, maybe can’t count out the weekend system.  Highs on Saturday are about 33 now down from upper 30s yesterday and 20s Sunday.

That's why I'm not ready to toss that one out as a rainy cutter, it has a better shot of at least being a redeveloper, and we should have a little better cold to work with ahead of it. 

48 minutes ago, Ecanem said:

Currently snowing in Upper st clair. It was rain and it’s back to snow.


.

Same, I'm really surprised to see it switch back to snow, that almost never happens once we go to rain.

53 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Definitely tossing this week obviously with the warm Temps and flooding rains. Appears that we are under a wind advisory with winds up to 40mph and gusts up to 50. After that model guidance is all over the place. Might get lucky and get some wrap around snows but those are usually overdone. What looks promising is a period after the cutters and even a possible TPV invasion which would of course bring in cold and dry conditions. Who knoes sometimes you get some arctic squalls that are fun. Ensembles show signs of possible snow in the coming weeks but we have to get through some cutters first. Looks like our next period is the 16-17.

Still plenty of winter left to cash, but you definitely hate tossing a week.

February shows possible phase 7 of the MJO which gives you this pattern. The MJO looks like it flies through right to phase 7,8 which are more favorable for winter weather.

 

I'm not ready to toss out the storm this weekend, still has a shot to be weaker / further SE, maybe front end to slop type setup. Next storm after is probably better shot as we start to get some ridging in the west and cold air can come east along with the storm track.

Good to see the MJO is flying through the bad phases. Should keep any negative effect minimal and set us up for a reload in Feb.

Seems like we have some dice rolls, whether we hit on any who knows. Still better than last year at least having hope and interesting stuff to track. 

Now to go put some bricks in my garbage cans before the wind storm. 

38 minutes ago, ChalkHillSnowNut said:

Picked up another 1.5” since about 8:30 this morning….its nice to just see the snow again finally even tho it will all be gone in another 48 hrs

Nice. Just some flurries here. Great to see the snow, even if only around for a short time.

Hopefully after this Tuesday midwest rain storm we get some clarity on next weekend. Im still concerned that tropical forcing in the bad phases of the MJO are going to lead to to much -PNA even though its counter to what youd expect in a Nino. We can benefit on the downstream effects of some ridging off the coast for a more Western track, but might be to much of that.