PrinceFrederickWx

Since this topic came up in various threads, I wasn’t sure where to post it, so I just made a new topic altogether. I looked up all the snow events that were 1” or more over the last 40 years at BWI and DCA (1980-2019) and charted them. An event was defined as 1” or more within a 3-day period. In some cases there was accumulating snow on four consecutive days- those were treated as two events, since NWS does not recognize 4-day snow events. Surprisingly for BWI, the trend line was slightly positive. On average, there are about 4-5 snow events of 1” or more during the season at BWI. For DCA, the trend was slightly negative. On average, there are about 3-4 snow events of 1” or more during the season at DCA. The year-to-year volatility for both locations started to increase from the mid-90’s onward. One other thing is that the number of events does not always correlate to whether the overall season was above or below average in total snowfall. For example, 2001 had below average snow and 2016 had above average snow; however, 2001 had more events than 2016. 1” was just an arbitrary line in the sand- perhaps if I raised or lowered the threshold, the story would be completely different. But the main topic on the forum recently has been (for example) that a 2” event would now be 0.2”. This chart should capture a decrease in those situations. @psuhoffman @North Balti Zen and @RevWarReenactor may be interested in this. Feel free to discuss or poke holes in it. It was a cursory look, but I can dig deeper if there's something more that anyone is interested in. Although I would ask that anyone please ask my permission first if they want to copy the charts to another site, thanks!

I feel like I’m reading youtube comments

I’m trying to remember who Tom Tasselmyer replaced but my mind is going blank. I keep thinking Ken Phillips but then I realized he was on WMAR. Ken Phillips was the most respected when I was growing up I remember. I think Norm Lewis replaced him though?

Pann was always very conservative with calls, at least when I watched him on TV in the 90's. He also busted bad on Snowmageddon I, when he said most of the area would be 12-15"

My benchmark for success IMBY is one WSW event per season, so yes, I would be much happier with 8" as opposed to 3", assuming the additional 5" all came from one event. 16/17 had one WSW event for me and nothing else and I was happy. I'm actually thinking of counting the number of 1" or greater events at DCA and BWI over the last 40 years and seeing if the trend line decreases. Anecdotally I agree but I want to see if there's data to back it up.

@leesburg 04 Who is "Ender"? @mappy is a meteorologist now?

Just checking in- are we still getting another 1994? This was around the time we were supposed to get it.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/lcd/lcd.html https://w2.weather.gov/climate/local_data.php?wfo=lwx

@jwilson The summer creep into September is indeed a real change occurring. As I posted in the Extreme Run thread last fall, every September in the 2010's at BWI finished with above average temperatures except 2013, which was only -0.1 below. The new 1990-2020 norms, when released, will definitely increase the September temperature. March has varied wildly over the last decade and it's difficult to draw any conclusions. For BWI, March should return to being snowier on average than December under the 1990-2020 norms, but this is just a return to how it's always been historically.

14/15 seems way more anomalous to me now then 09/10 and 15/16. Especially February 2015- how did we ever manage to have that much cold?

This is anecdotal, but I feel like we've lost all the minor 2-4" events I grew up with as a kid in the 80's and 90's. It's either WSW events or nothing. But I'm like you, hunting for the big storms.

I used this: https://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/bwisnow.pdf And the monthly reports here: https://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lwx And they both totaled 3.0; however, LWX has never updated their top five least snowiest winters chart and I don’t know why.

BWI only had 3.0” in 2016/17, which would place it #4 on that list.

If someone had called for a complete shutout, they would actually still be in second place, just 2.2 behind Prestige Worldwide.

The Ravens probably would’ve lost to the Chiefs anyway.

Update: BWI: 1.8" DCA: 0.6" IAD: 2.9" RIC: 1.0" @Prestige Worldwide still way out in front.

I wasn’t expecting to see accumulating snow here so this is a bonus.

I work in PG county and it was at least a half-inch of snow cover there the next day- and this is south and east of DCA. I’d be curious about this too- are there any studies linking climate change to a lack of -NAO in winter?

Holiday weekend weather is going to suck- cold, winds, cold winds, cold rain... Last weekend was so nice- I think I should move to the west coast and just fly back here for the HECS every few years. (Some smartass is gonna reply “well that sounds good, if it gets you out of this subforum permanently”)

I thought we had a coastal that looked like this in late January 2017 with a very similar setup that did indeed end up being all rain. I may have the year wrong though.

We certainly do fog well this winter.

One interesting thing in the 2010's was the pre-Christmas/Solstice thaw- nearly every winter had a big warmup around Dec 21-25. +11 at BWI now. We'll see how much it gets knocked down later this week, but so far, the only two January's that were warmer were 1932 and 1950. I had told Weather53 in his outlook thread last fall that 1931-32 was an analog I was looking at.

He’s one of three people here I have on ignore- he wrote an angry tirade cussing me out one time years ago and that was enough for me. I don’t have time for crazy people.

My Daffodils are coming up.