jm1220

Given how chaotic/fast the pattern is we won’t know more until tomorrow evening probably. Hopefully we can thread the needle and have a decent enough event but it will be a small window with a vigorous enough shortwave taking a good track. Lots of ways it can go wrong.

Unless we get the 4” in Central Park the stats for La Niña show mark the difference between the good and bad Nina outcomes, have to think this one would follow that trend. Central Park had 3.1” last Dec I believe and still ended way below average for snow.

I have to think there’s something here with how cold it’s been. It’ll probably be the minor 1-2” clipper but something to cover the ground at least which we got last Dec. But like you said who knows.

Regular GFS squishes it like a bug, congrats-ish DC to Cape May. Didn’t even know there was an AI GFS.

This Sun system is really just a vigorous shortwave moving in a fast chaotic pattern. There’s a chance we’re close enough north of it to be snowy, but also a chance it’s more suppressed crap or too amped. We won’t really know until within 72hrs or maybe even 60. Depends on the placement of the incoming arctic blast/trough and track of the shortwave as it comes in.

Yep I can see a possibility the Sun event can work out if we get the timing right with this S/W and some amplification. But it’ll be one of those deals where we probably have to wait until 72 hours out and all the features are well sampled given the very fast pattern. It could end up being suppressed again or amp more. Would be very nice to at least get on the board for measurable snow given all this cold.

If we keep getting suppressed garbage when it’s cold then I’m totally fine with it being mild enough to do activities outside. This dry cold with occasional cirrus from storms that get shunted way south is the worst.

13 here.

And next run it will show 60F under a massive ridge, run after that a blizzard, etc.

There was a death band S of Richmond to Newport News earlier. Must have been 1-2”/hr under it.

The tone today is a monotone snow weenie sigh under our thin cirrus deck while SE VA gets their 2nd snowstorm in a week.

And for stores that sell ChapStick.

Well-good thing is that Mother Nature couldn’t care less what a bunch of weenies on a weather board post or try to “force”. We have no power over it. It sucks watching Richmond get hit again while we just have some clouds and dry cold, but reality couldn’t care less. We can just evaluate it and try to learn what we can while hoping that the pattern changes.

Yep-there’s a reason why we always have “bad luck” or shortwaves interfering with storm setups and amplification. The flow is too zonal/fast so we have interference all the time from competing s/w and the ridge placement/amplification out west is always off-ridge is too flat or pushed out of place. Maybe one day we can get “lucky” even in this pattern and we won’t have to deal with all this interference, but to me it just seems very hostile to getting any larger snow system around the city than a small 1-2” type clipper like we had last December. Once the ridge out west amplifies, we can get some real blocking and the SE ridge stays muted we can talk about something bigger.

If we can somehow get that trough/vortmax to track under us and better yet close off SE of LI. The ridge out west has to be steep enough to allow it to dig and some blocking to the north would be good to slow everything down and lock in a high. In this pattern that's how we get anything to happen outside of a lucky 1-2" type clipper like last year before Christmas in a fast zonal flow.