Winter Wizard

Spring is quickly approaching the DC area! "In parts of the Southeast, this year's spring is the earliest in the 39-year record" https://www.usanpn.org/news/spring

To add insult to injury, places such as Midland, TX and Oklahoma City are currently under winter storm watches and are likely to blow away our seasonal totals over the coming days.

13/-7 in Natick. Visiting the area for AMS and family so this will be my first New England winter storm.

For once l’ll be rooting against the snow since I have a flight back from Boston tomorrow afternoon. Would be pretty fitting for my flight to get canceled or delayed coming back from a weather conference. Only supposed to get a few inches up here though so not worth being a weenie and rooting for a cancellation.

I grew up very close to the high elevation spot and in marginal events, there can be a significant difference between my house and ILG. Best recent example I can think of is 2/3/14 where I received over 4 inches and the airport barely got 1. In the last winter I measured every event in North Wilmington (2014-15), I received about 30% more snow than the airport over the season. That being said, I do understand @RevWarReenactor's frustration about the area because that area is often painstakingly close to bigger events but ends up on the wrong side of the gradient. @psuhoffman outlined this before with Miller Bs, but it's true for mixed events and southern sliders too. Mdecoy's situation is a bit worse than mine was when I lived in DE, but I still missed out on events such as 2/1994, 12/1995, 12/14/13, and 3/4/19 by maybe 20 miles. Meanwhile storms like 1/30/10, both March 2014 storms, 2/16/15, and 1/13/19 were advisory level storms while downstate and the DMV got crushed. Delaware is also pretty susceptible to dry slotting during big Miller As, which was most evident in the Blizzard of 2016 when NCC was a relative minima compared to the surrounding areas.

Annapolis, MD: 11/12: T 12/11: 0.2" 12/16: 0.1” 1/7: 1.0” TOTAL: 1.3”

Final total in Annapolis: 1.0” on the grass, nothing on the pavement. Right in line with expectations.

0.3 inches in Annapolis and ripping. Us Bay folks may cash in after all.

Just flipped to snow here in Annapolis with giant flakes. For the rest of you near the Bay, your time is coming shortly.

I'm just west of Annapolis and it's all rain here.

40/33 here in Annapolis. If i get an inch out of this I'll be ecstatic but I suspect I'll be on the wrong side of the gradient. I think my only hope down here is to get in on the IVT action. I see widespread 1-4 inches along and north and west of 95 with an isolated 5 inch total possible somewhere from, say, Germantown to Westminster.

This one has I'm sure been overshadowed by more recent storms, but 10 years ago today, this was an all timer for Long Island and the mid-Atlantic and MECS for NYC.

Annapolis, MD: 11/12: T 12/11: 0.2" (from coworker) TOTAL: 0.2"

I think what's important is both the GFS and the Euro (as well as ensemble guidance) have a strong antecedent cold air mass, west coast ridging and a shortwave tracking along and up the coast. The issue here is timing - if the system can arrive earlier and/or the high takes longer to retreat, then I suspect you could be seeing more favorable solutions. Lots to work out over the coming days, but for mid-December there are far worse looks we could be seeing.

Woke up to a wet ground. I'm guessing that band in NoVa died out before reaching Annapolis and/or temps didn't cooperate. Edit: yup, NAK and BWI both reported light rain. IAD recorded light snow.

Nice little band of snow rotating into Cecil and Harford counties.

The surface depiction is just noise at this point, especially the GFS which had a totally goofy evolution. The features aloft have largely trended in our favor today in terms of seeing some front end frozen precip. The 500 mb vort depicted in today's ensemble guidance is close to being in a favorable spot for DCA, but would still need to be considerably farther south in order to get anything from the coastal. Otherwise, the best dynamics would take place farther north and it's a congrats SNE.

And what's more impressive is the cold that follows it. State College drops into the low single digits for at least three consecutive mornings next week on the GFS.

12z GFS is another pretty solid run for C-PA snow next week. Classic anafront situation.

BWI: 23.2" DCA: 13.7" IAD: 25.1" RIC: 10.8" Tiebreaker SBY: 10.3"

Ended up at an astounding 98 degrees in Wilmington yesterday. Not only was this the warmest day in October on record, it was also the warmest day of all of 2019.

DCA: +5.5 and 0.25", good for 2nd warmest and 3rd driest IAD: +4.6 and 0.41", good for 3rd warmest and 2nd driest

Yup that one was a coastal that was way too far east for us. But brought a swath of 6+" to Norfolk/Virginia Beach to Chincoteague as well as eastern Long Island and Mass. Looks like DC didn't even see flakes from that one.

That was a backloaded winter if anything, which is typical of weak El Ninos. DCA temps and snowfall by month: DEC: +0.4 (0.1") JAN: +0.1 (6.4") FEB: +0.6 (5.2") MAR: -3.7 (0.8") Big storms that winter were the KU in January 2005 and back to back coastal storms in late Feb. January 2005 was a classic Miller B screwjob for the DC/Baltimore metro that crushed everyone north and east of Cecil. February 24-25 was a fast moving coastal that brought a wide swath of 6+" to Maryland east of DC although DC itself was a relative min. I don't recall the exact details of February 28-March 1, but I believe this was a storm where the primary low redeveloped too late, which kept the heaviest the snow well north and east of the metro. So as a result, it ended up being an average winter for DC and Baltimore, above average for Philly and NYC, and an all timer for Long Island and SNE including Boston.

BWI: 11/7 IAD: 11/7 DCA: 11/25 RIC: 12/2 Tierbreaker: 10.24"