87storms

I’m jealous. It’s been cool and cloudy in Frederick all day.

For me, it's mostly hobby-based. I play hoops several times a week and if there's games going on, I'll get in on that. Next favorite hobby is mountain biking. I love a good snowstorm...I probably always will, but the cold/wind is just not conducive to what I enjoy the most. For 3 months, I'm ok with it...any longer and it's like, ok, now what lol.

Tbh, 9 months of summer and 3 months of a true winter is kind of appealing.

The weather this week has been a work of art.

This week’s weather has been extremely ideal. Definitely not ready for snow yet lol. I’m a December to February type. Outside of that…meh…give me 50s and above temps.

Yea, the pattern this past week got played out. The upcoming forecast looks more appealing.

Skies are actually starting to clear around here...mission accomplished.

I think it's mostly with the mothership snowstorms, not so much the smaller ones. Also, if we consider weekends to be Friday to Sunday, that's 3/7 of a week. Pretty good chance something will happen on those days. It is funny that the big ones have tended to begin on a weekend, though. 93/96/10/16 were all Fridays. 03 was a Sunday I think.

The clouds to precip ratio continues to be low with what appears to be yet another cloud-producing straggler vort rounding around that GL/northeast trough. Nice football day, though. Outdoor hoops? Might need to stick to the mid-range or layup lines.

The heat dome is back. I wouldn’t mind a return of at least 70s here. It’s been a little too cool and cloudy recently for my taste…at least for this time of year.

The Blue Ridge rain shadow is back. Cloudy/cool...barely any precip. Next week looks more enticing with a ridge building in.

I will say, though...overall, today has been pretty nice.

The proportion of clouds to precip lately is very "2023". I do see a chance of storms tomorrow...somehow. That would be kinda cool.

Today has majestic weather potential.

Another cloudy day so far. I’m ready for that high pressure to take over.

Another day of a persistent cloud deck, though it looks like this might be the last cloud-fueled lobe of vorticity moving through.

I wasn't talking about January lol. I'm just saying the pattern right now is really no different than it has been all year, regardless of whether we're in an El Nino or not.

True, I should have mentioned a storm coming up from the south. This is just such an odd, prolonged pattern. Temp-wise, the trend would seem to indicate a cold winter ahead, but will it be accompanied by a pattern change and an active stj is the tbd.

I know we’re technically in an El Niño, but I don’t see how this is any different from a La Nina. It’s gonna be a change of pace when we get a storm out of the gulf.

Rain on the weekends is one thing; having it be cloudy during the day is another. Looking at the satellite loop isn't very inspiring. Good day to get work done.

I usually keep my indoor temp at 78ish in the summer so it feels chilly in my place even tho the thermostat currently says 73 lol. It also doesn’t help that it’s mostly cloudy outside.

In what can only be described as unusual this year…radar actually looks pretty good up here.

It's subjective...obviously, the play-in tourney needs to make money, but basketball only has 5 guys taking the floor from each team. It's not like football or baseball. For many years, it was a superstar league and kind of still is, though now because the game is global the talent pool is off the charts and you almost need 2 or 3 stars, so a lot of the anti-tanking rules (like how they smoothed out the lottery odds for the worst teams) may end up being overkill. I think a lot of these discussions show who's a true fan or not. I love basketball, so the idea of a play-in tourney is like...cool, more hoops lol. To casual fans, they may see it as watering down the season. Now what's really getting ridiculous is all the conference re-alignments in college sports.

I still think we need a couple more region-wide storms here. A lot of these events aside from Ophelia are still producing ticky tack/sporadic amounts of precip followed by several days of dry weather. The storm track still seems to be too far north with the deep south feeling the impacts even more than we are. It'll be interesting to see if the general overall pattern sticks through the winter...if so, there's gonna be a lot of time spent tracking Miller B's.

I don't think there's a right answer for how many teams should make the postseason. The main reason for the play-in games in the NBA is to avoid tanking for high lottery picks (like the Lebron's and Wemby's of the world), though with the amount of parity increasing, lottery picks may not matter as much as they once did which could make the play-in games a bit "extra". As for baseball, I think it's fine as-is. I certainly thought having only 2 from each league make the playoffs back in the day was a little weird, but maybe 4 was good enough. That said, if you get swept in a best of 5 after having a small break to rest aches and pains (which any athlete would appreciate), then you're just not ready to win it all.