bgmsnowman

P.S., I live up to the west of Albany so well outside of the area of interest for most people on this forum. I just posted a question to the board folks about where to go to get more talk about Albany / east central NY. I like to read the NYC and New England forums, but generally don't post much as again I assume most in your forum could care less about Albany. But I figure that the difference between the 12 km and 3 km might be a general enough question to be of interest to folks down your way.

I try not to put too much stock in the NAM at 72 hours and beyond, but now we are starting to get into its wheelhouse. It always seems like the NAM has a good handle on the mid-level warm nose; usually more aggressive than the other models and usually right. That would worry me if I was in northern NJ or NYC at this point given what the 3 km NAM is showing. Precipitation with the NAM can be a real crap shoot however, as we all know, with some big run-to-run swings sometimes right up until go time.

Curious, I have to admit that I usually don't look at the 3 km NAM much for non-convective situations (for warm season convection it can obviously be good at times). My impression of the 3 km NAM is that it should not usually be much different than the 12 km NAM, except noisier which often is not helpful for these synopically-forced system (lots of spurious detail which is often wrong anyway). I am really surprised to see the big difference between the 3 km and 12 km NAM runs at 12z this morning. I wonder if something is going on with the convection within that 12 km and 3 km NAMs that is making a big difference in the precipitation distribution. Obviously the 12 km is going to parameterize convection, while the 3 km is going to have explicit convection. Is there something going on with this case that makes that difference a much bigger deal than usual? Curious to see people's thoughts on this. Living up in the Albany area, I'm hoping that the 3 km is catching on to something, although to be honest I really am hoping for a decent snow down in NYC... you have suffered long enough!

Wondering if there is a sub-forum for that area. I see NYC / New England / and "upstate NY and Pennsylvania" although upstate NY looks to be mostly western NY.

For everyone on here. I am sure that some of you have thought about moving to get more snow. I grew up in the 70s and 80s along I-78 about 10 miles east of I-287 and really did not like being on the wrong side of the rain/snow line all to often. I remember thinking that maybe when I grew up I could live in northwest New Jersey or up into the Hudson Valley to get more snow. As an adult, I moved several times and currently live about 15 miles west of Albany at higher elevation so I certainly was able to move up into a snowier climate. I also lived in Binghamton for 15 years. You learn that there is no such thing as a perfect place for weather, and every place gets ripped off from time to time, but certainly upstate NY is better than the NYC area if you like snow! Wondering if anyone around NYC has considered moving, and where you think a "perfect" place might be...

So It's been several years since I stopped following this blog back in the mid 2010s. Just now I decided to check back in, and I see that there is still lots of spirited discussion on seasonal forecasting, particularly with respect to this winter. It's just like it was back in 2010-2015 when I was contributing. I really have to give some of the people on here a lot of credit for all of the effort that they put it in making these forecasts, and there are many on here who doubtlessly know much more than I do about some of the patterns and teleconnections that are discussed. But for some of the folks on here who are involved, I wonder what your take is on how much improvement there has been during the past 10 years or so. Earlier this fall I started looking at the tweets of an infamous forecaster known to all on this blog as "JB". I worked with him back in the 80s, and followed his seasonal forecasts back in the 2000's and 2010s'. It's amazing to me he never changes. Back in November when I saw that he started forecasting cold and snowy for "the holidays", and cold weather for bowl games that would favor northern teams, I thought to myself, "well that's the kiss of death, in a few weeks he'll push it back to New Years, then mid-January, then February. Finally, we will get a 1 to 3 week spell of cold and snow in late January or early February, then he'll double down and predict even more for mid February through March, but that will be followed by another warm spell. Then he'll talk about late March / April snow potential for "the mountains", then he'll finally give up at the end of April and start hyping hurricanes". I'm thinking that my prediction looks pretty good so far. Anyway, I know that there are several forecasters on this blog who do not have this bias, and who make good faith efforts to try to get it right. So again, my question; do you think there is any hope for these predictions to improve? Have they been improving? Is there anyone out there who consistently nails these forecasts on a year-to-year basis. I do think that 10 day forecasts from the GFS and ECMWF have gotten somewhat better over the past 10-15 years, but I am talking about seasonal forecasts. I fully admit that I have no skill when it comes to forecasting beyond 2 weeks. Maybe there is still time for JB to be right this year??