PrinceFrederickWx

I had to mow last weekend. Other than that one low of 21 last week, I’ve never gone below the upper 20’s this winter. My Daffodils and Hyacinths are about to bloom and some of my shrubs near the house never even went fully dormant.

Update: BWI: 1.8" DCA: 0.6" IAD: 2.9" RIC: 1.5"

I think the upper limit on what I could grade this winter would be a C- and that assumes a 30” HECS in March with 5” per hour rates.

I didn’t realize DCA has never had a zero (i.e. not even a T) February... BWI had zeroes in 1884 and 1898 though.

I agree this is probably all subjective. Climo IMBY in April is 60’s and the period from April to early June is our best shot at what I consider “nice” weather, so I don’t like it when we lose part of that to 40’s and lingering cold (I’d be especially pissed if it happened after this awful winter too). Admittedly I’m not a cold lover so yeah, I consider 40’s cold... I don’t ski, but I can’t imagine myself skiing in -10 temperatures.

I noticed you used the entire month, instead of just the first half like my post stated... BWI had five straight days in April 2007 that never got out of the 40's (and also had accumulating snow). I had snow falling on both 4/7/18 and 4/9/18 and accumulating on 4/9/16. 40's in April is cold to me- that's our average DJF high. The first half of April can be a winter month- I could fill the entire page up with examples.

idk about that- the first half of April can be quite chilly if it wants too (2018 and 2007 come to mind).

This is February 1998 all over again.

You should make it top seven at BWI so once this winter is done we can have 97/98 and 16/17 still on the list. Five of the top seven in the last 22 years lol

Historically it usually takes one rebuilding season to get out of dumpster fires like this one (the exception to this was 01/02 though).

This winter is even worse than 11/12- at least that winter had a dusting in October (probably something I’ll never see IMBY again).

I watched Season 1 of True Detective- for you tropical weenies, I counted at least three different hurricanes mentioned (Andrew, Rita and Katrina).

NWS still has no chance of rain today and becoming mostly sunny- but it’s raining here currently.

I've been out on February for a long time. In most of the fall seasons that I found similar to 2019, the pattern generally persisted until March and then flipped. March has a chance but like I said last fall, I wouldn't be hanging my weenie hat on a one-in-a-million HECS save like 1942. Some paltry snow event that melts in an hour is more likely. I wanted to be reaped early on because getting some event in March isn't enough to save it for me (but might be enough to have me win the snowfall contest lol). After I made that post in October, I became even more concerned with how dry November was- having precip less than 2" at BWI and DCA is one of the best leading indicators of an impending dumpster fire.

God damn this post was sooo good!

I will post this video in lieu of a Halftime Report, as it provides a better recap of the season so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcI_l_biVOg Reminder: "analysis" comes from the word "anal" plus "-ysis", which is Latin for "to pull things from":

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.