olafminesaw

May happy hour be happy for once. Hard to stomach the big three indicies being favorable, including a 3 std dev negative AO resulting in the same old la Nina pattern. But I prefer to focus on the fact that we have a storm to track that isn't dead yet.

Average out the 12z and 18z and you get great storm for many. Good run considering suppression from the EPS

Also of note, the models are trending towards a quick reload after the system to not really deviate from a favorable pattern. Of course we will be fighting an uphill battle with climo at that stage but it's also not necessarily do or die for the PD storm

The GFS looks much more like the EPS than the Euro OP. Sustained source of cold air aloft and multiple opportunities for wave development in the WAA region. Sometimes moisture can over perform in these setups far away from any kind of low pressure development. Knoxville scored big from WAA moisture last month even though they were thought to be on the dry side of the storm. Ideally we need to have the northern stream energy not interfere too much for this to work.

To me GFS looks much better through 168. Better stream interaction.

Last night's EPS had like 3-4 waves it's trying to resolve. Kinda a good thing because with a big amped up storm we always flip to rain/ice. Moisture riding the boundary is our path to a big storm as yesterday's 12z GFS depicted. Having to rely on a well timed phase does make me nervous, but that's just winter in the South

Interesting how the ensembles have consistently much more suppressed than the OP. Thankfully the Euro is nearly in range and can hopefully give us a somewhat clearer picture.

Yeah not really a great place that's free. Weather.us has limited individual member maps as well as plume graphs for a specified location.

College of dupage doesn't have all the members. I think it's just one member skewing the mean. There's one that drops 2 feet of snow on Montgomery Alabama.

The major theme from the ensembles is suppression for the storm around the 19th. Seems to be plenty of cold air though, which would yield a very good result with a few ticks more amped, as the GFS lends credence to. Now is the time for patience, can't control what happens.

Does anyone have upper level data for February 2015? This was an El Nino year which could be a good analog for what a good outcome might look like.Started out warm and ended very cold. One big storm for the northern half of NC and a couple smaller storms.

It does look pretty good in theory. Ensembles leave on the table the general evolution we've faced. Cutter on the front side, cold air gets established but too dry and HP keeps waves from developing in the Gulf, pattern relaxes and the firehose starts back up but there isn't any blocking high to lock cold in place. Still, overall the best window we've seen all winter with cold and moisture linking up on at least some guidance.

Sometimes I feel like long range tracking is a bit like surfing. You're waiting for that perfect wave to come along, big enough, breaks at the right angle and where you're at. Sometimes you look off in the distance and see what looks like the perfect wave. It's all coming together. But at the last minute you realize it's just a swell that doesn't really break, or it peters out. Some days you're out there and wave after wave just doesn't break the way you need it too. You think you're unlucky at first, but after a while you realize, without a shift of the wind, or moving to a different location, all the waves are going to break that way. We need that proverbial wind shift and if it never comes, we all need to move to buffalo.

The GEFS members that have snow transfer and develope a new low near the coast which gets pulled inland by the interaction with the original low. A messy setup that could work in theory, but can't think of an analog where this worked out. The OP kinda has this evolution, it's just that the system gets pulled OTS to quickly, which would be the more plausible solution.

Pretty much in line with what I would expect with this system. A long shot but realistically possible

The biggest reason to be pessimistic is lack of cold air. Even with a perfect track we would likely be all cold rain. The only path to snow at this point is for the storm to stall just off shore and wrap cold air around. A tall order for sure.

Doesn't raising the resolution just make it exactly the same as the current OP? Because the control is just a low resolution version of the OP currently?

The southern stream energy comes ashore Thursday evening so the weenie playbook says we can't write this one off until then.

Still seeing some big chances in the overall look.

Wackiest run of the year. Easily.snowing in the piedmont at 189. Maybe the only way we can win is something like this where it gets delayed so much the cold can work back in.

It certainly is. If there were more cold air in Canada this run would be a major ice storm. It seems to have evacuated the building however.

A weaker/further north HP and the storm track is ideal but too warm at the surface. A stronger HP and it's cold enough but too far south. We kinda gotta hope that modeling is just not putting all the possible scenarios on the table right now. FWIW the GEFS mean is showing a bit of CAD. That may be our only path to frozen. Which would depend on a relatively weak HP, but the low in Atlantic Canada needs to be strong enough and in an ideal spot

The trend is clear. I wouldn't quite write this one off yet though.

For sure. More or less the same. Not good trends today but we still have time. it's actually quite common to have storms disappear due to suppression squashing them into the Gulf. Probably just as common as the NW trend leading to rain rather than snow. Kinda makes sense with all the big rex block, and positive tilt

GFS looking juiced so far down in Texas. Let's see if we can get a little step in the right direction