RIC_WX

Between LaVale and Finzel the entire world changes in a few miles

Cameras looking good at my place. Enjoy!

17.9 / 3 Leesburg 12.5 / 2.3 Swanton Like my children. It’s in the teens.

Well its about time. I am sure we'll find a path to warm up and rain in time for my return next weekend.

This whole thing could be a rainstorm. But all I know is if the track was perfect 72+ hours out, no one would believe we are locked in.

Another gutter flusher today. I don’t know how they escape flood warnings there is water everywhere you look and every stream is at its bank. I guess everything reverts to frozen brick status overnight. I went from 26*at 6AM to 42* by 8:30 this morning. I now see the other side of the mountains held the CAD most of the day.

11/6 Swanton. Windy AF, in the negative single digits consistently. Upslope cranking with the sun trying to shine through. We did not hit the high end totals here but too windy to be confident in any measurement. I am estimating around 6". No doubt much heavier totals close by in WV, this was their event if you ask me. Bonus, for the first time all season it feels like legit deep winter here.

4 hours in and being generous...only about 2.5" here. Radar looks super juicy to the SW but at the speed this is moving, we need some 1" per hour rates or we are not going to meet potential here. Wind is 0.0. Dead calm. How often you see that during precip here?

Swanton 23/21. SN About 1.5" so far, but picked up in the last hour

26/16 now with SN-

Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed Monday back east, where I got fringed at JYO. Looking forward to a better outcome this time.

28/12 Swanton, Cloudy. Radar starting to fill in here but air is too dry. Winds have slacked off considerably since about 10A or so. First WSW at this location. LFG!

No end to the rain train in sight. My PWS here, 1.26” and counting. https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KMDSWANT20

Imagine if history repeated itself darn near 20 years to the day.

I would bet January has at least one stretch that relative to average, is an order of magnitude bad beyond anything we have seen so far. January 1950 / 2002 style. Some years are just this way, and a lot of signs this is one of them. This sure seems like a less bold prediction that winter somehow snaps back with a vengeance in the second half. The rotten pattern is remarkably stable. Only positive I see is it locked in early and with a little luck it relents somewhat that we could manage a decent finish in February / March. Somewhat difficult to imagine current pattern sustaining itself that long, but equally difficult to see it breaking down anytime soon.

Don't worry. If winter fails there is always spring. Today it's kinda hard to tell the difference. I could see March being the snowiest month of the winter here (and elsewhere).

Appears the temperature rises above freezing on Friday AM and may remain there for...? I feel terrible for WISP as next week is basically make or break for the season. I am sure they would rather flush the first 2 weeks of January compared to the last week of December, given the chance.

12Z GEFS continues to trend warmer in the medium range (next week) and has more or less eliminated the modest cold anomalies previously indicated for NE that maybe could have expanded and bled south. Irrespective of what the long range progs suggest here, the pattern out west remains remarkably stable through the end of the run.

The Garrett crowd concurs here for sure. :-)

Zonal flow would set up, not an illogical way out of the present mess. But I don't think we would like the outcome much better.

There are years where one factor cannot singlehandedly overwhelm the equation. This is not one of them. Eventually this pattern breaks down, hopefully with meaningful time left on the clock. Climate change or not, historically bad patterns exist in the data set (94-95, 01-02) and sometimes spawn spectacular reversals 12 months later. Until something changes, break out the shorts.

I agree we all want to look smart and accurately predict the seasonal pattern progression with some scientific basis of thought. I think some of the frustration / cynycisim however stems from all of the pre season prognostication, where one would expect it is easier to get the first month of the season right rather than the later months. I don't recall many predicting on the record that December was going to more or less torch wire to wire - most of the predictions were for a "front loaded winter". If the consensus forecast gets the first month completely wrong, it's hard to say we scientifically had any more than equal chances in speculating where we might end up. Last week the ensembles showed normal to below temperatures beginning on or about 12.28. Now next week looks normal to above on the ensembles, and teasing the more significant pattern change in early January. This isn't deb, it's just a disappointing reality for anyone anticipating avoiding a torch for the holidays. There appears to be the potential for a lot of mild weather and a handful of only seasonably chilly days. Eventually what appears to be an incredibly stable (but hostile for us) pattern in the pacific is going to break down. Whomever can explain, time and predict this with accuracy deserves the accolades. I am pretty skeptical this happens in early January, at least on a sustained basis. Happy to be called wrong if it does.

14.2 in Swanton just before 7AM. Crystal clear blue sky and frost everywhere.

I was going to post this yesterday but somehow resisted it. Thank you. As for GEFS, I get the feeling there is a classic thermal boundry setting up for the late holiday / post holiday period. On the right side of the boundry is cold/dry and on the wrong side you have today and the rest of this week. This pattern will eventually produce some cold days and nights, and pity snows (cartoppers). Chance of brine 90%. There is legit cold air in western canada but without a mechanism to force it down, it's hard to envision a sustained period of deep winter. IIRC the all time January high temp for several stations in VA was set in late January 2002 (~80*F).

26* Leesburg 17* Swanton (low of the season) These numbers aren't being challenged anytime soon