weatherwiz

The fast flow idea is something which definitely needs more research...not just in the sense of comparing charts but using the complex mathematical equations to either back up the idea or debunk it and also factor in wavelengths. It's something Ray and I had some dialog on earlier last month and I didn't have much of an answer but I've continued to think about it and have generated some hypotheses on why the fast flow would seemingly hurt us but no where else. An idea which comes to mind is the fast flow greatly alters both the position, strength, and orientation of the ridge/trough evolution downstream of the jet max. When it comes to "fast flow" I don't know if there is any literature which provides some methods or means to defining it, I am going to assume just a simple, "deviating from the mean" so with that the focus on my mind is the strength of the jet max. The second part of this, and this is where I don't have much thought or reasoning is, because of where we are located geographically with respect to "normal" trough/ridge axes and evolution...the faster flow just screws us. Let's look at it in this sense: During the summer, what is one reason why it is extremely difficult (or what seems impossible) to get the extreme heat into our region (I'm talking about widespread >100°F)? The position and orientation of how the southern ridge evolves...it either does so to pump the heat into the West, central states, midwestern states, or mid-Atlantic. Now there are other factors such as airmass modification due to convection, fronts, etc. Back to the cold season, but with the faster flow you are either increasing the likelihood for cyclogenesis and rapid LP strengthening well west of the Appalachians (hence west of us getting hit) or a bit farther off the mid-Atlantic coast or even southeast coast (hence south of us getting hit) but the faster flow disrupts storms potential from coming up the coast. I think this could be similar to that of tornado alley. There has been alot of discussion of whether tornado alley has "shifted" from what it was once perceived. But historically tornado data shows a concentrated area of tornadoes within the Great Plains ("original Tornado Alley") and a secondary concentrated area within the Mississippi Valley area (with a gap between the two). This gap could be explained by shifts within the trough axis based on the flow so either you get periods (years) where tornado activity is concentrated within the Great Plains or where it is concentrated several hundred miles south and east...so the area in between these two has a lower concentration of activity just because of where they happened to reside to the location of the trough axis. This could be a incredibly cool and fun study for someone to heavily divulge into but would requite using primitive equations to explain the flow, changes in the flow, and downstream implications.

I don't think the sun isn't doing anything to the snowpack in this atmosphere. Evidence of that is looking at the roofs of peoples houses.

This type of cold hits different when there is snow on the ground. How deep winter should be. But I am soon ready for warmer weather and some stretches of nice spring like weather. That first stretch of 60's we get is going to be something.

Actually I've seen very few myself. Maybe a few. For my birthday my girlfriend got me this little device thing where you like put it over the spider and then slowly move a notch and it traps it so you can put it outside. It actually works kind of well but I told her I can only deal with that up to a certain size. I think there has only been one in the bathroom and I caught one crawling on the floor when I was cleaning. Other than that, nothing else.

Guess we'll just call this the storm that could have been. I for sure thought this was going to come up the coast days ago but totally wrong on that. dendrites post this morning illustrated why it wasn't happening and those signals with trough, dPVA, and dynamics were there the whole time to tell the story.

Starting to even wonder if this ends up being a bit of a bust within the mid-Atlantic. Getting harder to argue against the convection stealing the show

Lots of disturbing posts today, makes me wonder if some are suffering from too much carbon monoxide intake. Might need to clear snow away from outside vents?

west, west baby. Come west to me baby

100% agreed. Overall, it seems very unlikely we see the changes needed but it's much closer than it appears. I also hate comparing storms, particularly different setups and this is nothing like last week. This is a totally different animal and additional processes being added.

The trough being too far east may be the overarching death killer here. I feel like the GFS is being way too aggressive with that convection, both with scale and intensity. If we remove that, we end up with a much more consolidated system that comes up the coast a bit closer but the trough probably would yield a result just favorable enough for areas towards the Cape

This reminds me of those times when the GFS goes nuclear with MCS' moving across the midwest and brings them into the Northeast only for reality to be a few circus clouds

If we are ever going to see a substantial model bust in this day in age of models inside of 72 hours, it will be with this setup

really want to give this until 12z tomorrow before totally writing off...well at least when talking about back towards and west of the CT River. This is going to be a really close call in the end

don't count your chickens before they shit. We might have something with development right off the coast

That is a ton of convection chasing on the 12z GFS through 72 oh my

That's still about 30 seconds too long

I've actually changed my perspective on this and I think the massive snow cover has helped with that. When I was outside the other night, it brought back some good memories. A deep snow cover with frigid temperatures and a gusty wind...kind of makes you remember what winter should be. Not to mention just soaking up the landscape around you. It also reminds me of the Little House on the Prairie Book series...I can image myself in the Dakotas in the early days during blizzards and frigid temperatures. Also, this will make the warm weather that much more welcomed and enjoyable when we reach that time

I think I need somewhere around 75" to hit 100 so I am truly hoping this can be something that produces 18-24" and then we can get a few more 18-24" in February and maybe a 12-18 in March

maybe they used the wrong product to communicate what they meant Or they just aren't very bright. Let's go with the latter

Using snow maps to indicate storm track or trends in anything is just lol

That double low feature continues yielding some big challenges. If that isn't a real thing this mostly comes west...but you never know with those features

I'm kind of glad models are south and east at this point. Means we don't have to be bombarded with snow maps every 5 seconds and then every 3 seconds when you get the Kuchera showing 40"

What really sucks about this is it is nearly impossible to gauge the validity of that aspect until real time (or at least not until within 6-12 hours).

Also, the size of that high pressure system is massive, stretching from the upper-Midwest into southeast Canada southwest into the southern Plains...that as well argue for something farther north and west for track

Yup...this is a model weakness in these airmasses. Forecast models don't have the necessary resolution to accurately handle this so you'll see the models just want to put the low where the warm air is. We certainly can't rule out a dual low structure either and there is a chance that this system has more in the way of convection associated with it which adds additional problems (as we know)