mattskiva

32 degrees mod SN, about 1.5" here in southeast Loudoun. Been snowing pretty hard for almost 2hr

5 minutes ago, LeesburgWx said:

Loudoun left out of WWA?

Eastern Loudoun is WWA

6 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

CWG still does great local forecasts but it’s also about them being the weather section for one of the biggest national newspapers, meaning they pick up a ton of global/continental US weather-related stories, especially when the weather is slow locally

Fair, but I suspect most of their facebook audience is DC people who care about the weather, not people overseas looking for stories about fish and dams.  Also, even if they pick up global/continental weather related stories, I am still not sure how that one has anything whatsoever to do with weather.  Except, of course, for the fishnadoes.

So CWG facebook has been about 4:1 climate change to actual capital weather posts for a while now, but now they are posting about ... fish being impacted by dams? Unless its going to increase the risk of downstream fishnadoes (in which case sign me up)... why?

2 hours ago, ChesterfieldVa80 said:

Only I can pick a weekend to ski canaan valley where it snows considerably more at snow starved resorts like Wintergreen.  

Despite what the models say, it very rarely actually works out like that.

One big event, in addition to all the small events and persistent snowpack, would make this a really good winter.

5 minutes ago, yoda said:

Now watch the Euro come SE just to taunt us

I remember when the Euro was king... apparently the king has been deposed, Game of Thrones style.

1 hour ago, yoda said:

UKIE is sharp... and I mean SHARP cutoff on snow amounts... went NW compared to 00z last night

Still looks like a chance for a decent event here in Loudoun - and maybe a big storm for the Allegheny Front, which is really what I care about this time of year because there are no mountains to ski on the coastal plain.

0.75" here in SE Loudoun, snowing the hardest it has all day currently.

21 minutes ago, jayyy said:

If models weren’t showing LI over to SNE seeing multiple feet from this, we’d probably be talking about the actual storm lol

2-4” for many with a chance - albeit small - at more near the metros (with no mixing issues) is still pretty solid.
 

Especially considering it’s January in a niña winter — a month many were writing off throughout most of December. 

We’ve tracked a solid 5/6 events, most of which produced at least some snow. Could have been an epic month had a few things gone our way, but it certainly beat expectations.  Models have another few threats for us to track between now and Valentine’s Day too 

Oh I have no complaints about this winter so far. I would love to see a big storm but I've had like 20 days with 1" or more on the ground, and it's still January. That's more than I can remember in most of the 30 years I've lived in the area. The two small storms and persistent cold kept the snowpack intact until late last week.

3 minutes ago, caviman2201 said:

Can we stick to weather instead of what the government should or should not fund? FFS there's enough of that outside this board.

RE: Snow in NYC, I have never been there for a big snow, but my wife and I were there many years ago before kids for a romantic long weekend and I have fond memories of a night in NYC when it snowed about an inch. We started off with drinks at Angel's Share speakeasy watching people out the windows from the cozy dark bar and then walked in the snow up from there to Koreatown and had drinks at some rooftop bar that was right at the base of the Empire State Building. The view of the majesty lit up Empire State Building towering over us at night while we drank Irish coffees sitting in the snow was pretty awesome.

This is just as off-topic - who cares about snow in NYC? There's a NYC forum for that.

Nobody is posting about the actual storm at the moment - for obvious reasons

1 minute ago, pazzo83 said:

yeah the price is ridiculous.  the long and short of it is that the US sucks at passenger rail service.  100 years ago we led the world.  now we don't even hold a candle to systems in the developing world.

People prefer air travel. Rail is perceived like buses - for people who can't afford to fly. It has nothing to do with what politicians or "the US" wants -- the market doesn't want trains.

1 minute ago, pazzo83 said:

the NE corridor actually runs in the black (financially) - at least before COVID.  It subsidizes the rest of Amtrak's network (which is a joke).

I believe that. It's expensive! Not kidding I have had colleagues take Acela to NY from DCA for twice what I paid to fly from IAD.

14 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

yeah but you think door-to-door.  Union Station to Back Bay or South Station is nothing vs going from like IAD to BOS.

Given what Acela costs, nobody would be able to afford an actual high speed train. It would be like riding the Concorde. Unless the government paid all the costs. Which is why its pretty clear that the market has no desire to fund trains in this country. If there was market demand, it would exist.

2 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

yeah if you live by IAD it's a no-brainer.  Even DCA.  Like I said - right now, Amtrak from DC to Boston isn't really workable (unless you don't care how long it takes lol).  But DC to NYC is another story.  Even if you live by DCA, I'd still rather go Union Station to NY-Penn on the Acela (if I'm trying to get to Manhattan).

Acela is often more expensive than the shuttle flights though. To barely go any faster than the regular train. The only advantage is it takes you into the city -- yeah if you live near DCA it makes sense, but not if you live near IAD

1 minute ago, pazzo83 said:

yeah but you think door-to-door.  Union Station to Back Bay or South Station is nothing vs going from like IAD to BOS.

For those of us who live near (west of) IAD, the IAD to BOS flight (or even IAD to EWR/LGA) is way better than driving an hour to union station, parking, and then taking a slow, expensive train to the northeast,

I've traveled from NoVA to the northeast hundreds of times in my career and took the train like twice - the number of times it took to realize how dumb that was living close to IAD.

And a very large number of tech company commuters who regularly travel the northeast corridor live out here in Loudoun. That's why the flights to those cities are always full and the government has to subsidize Amtrak to keep its empty trains running.

1 minute ago, nj2va said:

That’s a pretty darn good run IMO.  2-5” on the table for DC.  

I’d like to see NAM increase QPF totals in Deep Creek, selfishly  

Presumably Garrett and Tucker will get a lot more from upslope than would show on the models.  That usually isn't modeled very well.

1 minute ago, nj2va said:

It's a combo of the NS vort and then upslope.  The orographic lift will squeeze every drop of moisture out of that NS vort.

Ah got it.  Makes sense.  I was in Canaan in 2016 for that storm and was getting worried when there was very little snowfall initially the first day while NoVA was getting crushed, but later that night the upslope kicked in and they got 2 feet.

21 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

At least it seems like even if the coastal doesnt necessarily pan out, we get some consolation with the northern Branch and maybe a 1-3/2-4 area wide.

I've noticed a lot of these runs, even the ones that drop nothing on the DC/Balt metros, crush Garrett and Tucker counties. Is that wraparound as the storm moves NE?  And is that typical in a Miller B scenario?

23 minutes ago, snowmagnet said:

All of our big winter storms (2010, 2016, etc)are Miller A, correct?  

I seem to recall a few times that (at least out here on the Piedmont) we've done very well with Miller B's

9 minutes ago, TSSN+ said:

Juiced 

Way too far west at that latitude, as Ji said, congrats Cleveland

That would destroy the southern Appalachians though.  That's gotta end up like 50" in parts of WV

1 minute ago, Kmlwx said:

True - but keep in mind I believe these obs were taken pretty close-in - like at Mount Vernon perhaps. 

Yeah, that's a little more surprising.

Dulles got 32" in 2010 and 29" in 2016, both of which are close to three feet.  But I think the numbers were quite a bit lower at National.

17 minutes ago, BlizzardNole said:

I read about that somewhere and remember a quote like "...36 inches deep on a level."  To have a snow depth of 36" the snowfall amounts by today's measuring must have been in the 45" range!

Parts of the western suburbs got close to that total in both 2010 and 2016, so it's really not that far-fetched.  Maybe for the coastal plain, but west of the fall line that is not an outrageous total.

12 minutes ago, IUsedToHateCold said:

Sometimes I read comments like this and realize I’m not as crazy about snow as some of you lol. My wife and I have never had this conversation and I wouldn’t drive to chase a snowstorm. Still love tracking them. Wish more would just happen over my house because they are fun. 

I only chase snow west, to ski the pow when it hits.  I drove out to Canaan the day before the big storm in 2016 and had three crazy days of waist deep powder to ski.  Generally I will head out there any time there is more than a foot forecast.

7 minutes ago, jayyy said:

We get SO close (on a few different occasions) to seeing a big snowstorm in our area….. details to be ironed out later of course…. but man, if we can manage a few 3-6/4-8” type events over the next 2-3 weeks, that certainly wouldn’t be a fail either. We’d see the major terminals over climo and many of us would be well above where we should be by end of January.

Of course, getting a big KU would satisfy the weenie craving during such a tasty pattern, but you won’t find me complaining if we manage to pile up between 1-2 feet of snow over the next few weeks with multiple advisory / low end warning snowfalls one after the other. Especially with the advertised cold, as snowpack would largely remain in tact throughout the period.
 

Lots of fun tracking ahead of us! Can’t wait to do it with you knuckleheads. 

January's already been a lot of fun - even with some close misses - this year has been great compared to recent years.  I've had an inch or more of snow on the ground here in Loudoun pretty much continuously for over two weeks.  That's a good winter in my book.

And I would always rather see two feet of snow in Tucker County, where I can actually ski it.  Keep dumping on the mountains with a solid base of a few inches on the coastal plain, and I call that a success.