coastalplainsnowman

For the college football watchers, the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium between Penn State and Clemson is at noon Saturday. If the storm works out as hoped, that'll be a fun game to watch, even if the snow is winding down by then.

The recent and upcoming weather has got me thinking. Which of the following scenarios do you prefer: 1. Experiencing a 3-6" snowstorm right now, knowing it is going to be washed away by a rainstorm in 48 hours 2. Experiencing a dreary, misty damp day right now, but there's a 40% chance of 6-8" in 48 hours

I figure this is as safe a place as any to post this. Hear me out.. was just watching Fox Weather for more than 3 minutes straight for the first time. I'll say this much - at 1AM they were covering - wait for it - weather. Talking about the Dec 26/27th threat, naming each of the models, presenting what each is showing. Not taking itself too seriously. Beats the other late night weather options of When Tornadoes Attack or some such nonsense on TWC, or the Accuweather wall to wall equivalent of Local on the 8s interspersed with mattress commercials. Just saying - not the worst thing to have on the telly in the background. What's the saying? Don't @ me bro...

In which "snow weenies", to the general public, and especially to the wives and girlfriends of everyone on this weatherboard, is everyone on this weatherboard.

We definitely have the airing of grievances part covered.

Not to mention, being December 23rd it will be practically the best sun angle possible, especially at night.

Snowman posting a laughing emoji to MJO filled me with enough Christmas spirit to make Santa's sleigh fly without a jet engine.

That's HRRRible. (been wanting to use this for awhile.)

I prefer the stat of 'most consecutive days of snowpile' to the 'latest date of snowpile', and the best years to get those are one like this, where we get some decent snowpiles in mid december. Even with a few modest plowable snows spread out in a favorable way, you can keep replenishing and have a snowpile in one spot from December 14th into April.

I remember years asking on this forum (or probably a predecessor forum) what's the longest they've seen a plowed pile of snow last. Someone within this forum's geographic area responded June - I want to say it wasn't plowed but rather snow that had been somehow packed in somewhere in the shade on the side of some mountain. June!

To your point, unless one lives near Upton and are experiencing this, isn't this more about the fact that different parts of Upton's area, and even just LI itself, can have wildly different degrees of cloud cover?

Not 7-10 days ago there was much lamenting by some about what was considered to be an eternal cold/dry, warm/wet pattern in which it would never ever snow ever again. Yet here we are this morning with a moderate snowfall across virtually everyone's backyard. So certain 7-10 days ago, yet look outside the window. At least recognize that there's nowhere near anything approaching certainty as to whether we will or won't get another nice storm 10-14 days from now, no matter what any model says today.

I'd like to make a contribution to the dictionary of snowfall descriptors from earlier this week: If weatherboards like this were a thing in the 1970s, we'd all be using just one phrase: It's snowing to beat the band! What the heck does that even mean anyway?

I remember being on one of these boards a long (long) time ago during a big storm, when I had just moved into my house, reporting that I'd been hearing periodic thundersnow over and over, when in reality it was my furnace kicking in. Cringeworthy before that was a common term.

Orzo it seems.

penne for your thoughts on this

ok but this model [which, to a snow lover is showing no snow, or to a rain lover is showing lots of snow] is terrible at this range

There seems to be a hard cap of about 35% happiness here.

I'd love to know how strongly correlated a snowfall prediction 360 hours out is to actual results. I know we like to joke that if it's on there at 360 that's bad because that means it won't happen, but it's probably just a wee bit better to be in the jackpot 360 hours out than for it to be showing no storm? Or is the correlation so weak as to be negligible? At what point is it better than negligible? 10 days? 8 days? I imagine those results exist somewhere? When I'm retired someday I'm going to have a lot of fun messing around with this sort of data.

I'm sure you're right, I don't remember exactly. But it's also true that for Farmingdale, NY there's been at least one 54+ day - a super mild, holiday-spirit crushing day - in the week leading up to Christmas every year for the last 14 years, including last year, when it was 58. The average of the highest temperature reached in the week leading up to Christmas Day since 2011 is 58.64. The median is 58.5. Every year I hope it won't happen, but that hasn't seemed to help.

I'll have to check that one out. I picked up a great book about it about five years ago: "Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park"

Anybody remember the movie Krull and the Cyclopses who had traded one eye in exchange for being able to see the future, but were tricked in that the only future they could see was their own demise? That's what this place is like. Here it is, early December. Snow to our south, sub freezing temperatures across most of this board, mood flakes on the way, below normal temperatures forecast pretty far out, and some of us *still* aren't happy, because at some point, it's going to rain or be mild again someday. As for all the talk about "we're screwed, it's going to be cold but dry", I'm willing to bet that in every year of this board's existence, there was chatter like that two days into every single solitary late fall/winter cold snap which didn't immediately produce. Sometimes it turned out to be true, but sometimes it did not. For the non mets on here who like snow and cold, enjoy the moment for pete's sake. It's always eventually going to be warm again.

This was great - thanks for sharing. Folks were mentioning Alberta Clippers in the 90s, but honestly I remember them as a staple of the 80s. Those were always fun to track (and as a kid in the 80s, 'track' meant looking out for an updated 'A Look Ahead' on TWC, and tuning into the local mets at 45 past the hour.) They might miss to the south, and they might not have big potential, but at least rain was never in the equation. Plus, whatever did fall often stuck around awhile. Back then - this is prior to the spoils of 2000-2018 - a clipper whose potential was bumped up from 1-3 to 2-4 was enough to get us amped up as kids. 3-6? Amazing.

For a minute there that thing looked like it was going to get pinched out in the direction of the camera guy at 200MPH.