bristolri_wx

This doesn't look terrible for 1/22... there's potential there...

From the high level view, the major/trusted models were pretty good with todays (1/17) storm. We all questioned the unusual mechanics at first vs normal climo but other than shifting it east a little out of NY and into NNE, the track was pretty accurate, as was strength predictions.

Winds were cranking here overnight just a constant roar for several hours. Bridges were closed in RI - Newport, Jamestown, and Mt Hope. The latter just finally reopened… things have noticably calmed down now.

Nice haul for the White Mountains. Enjoy up there!

North of flatulenceville...

I know I'm only getting windy rain out of this, but man that 500mb vorticity map is the most interesting/unique thing I've seen in a while. I know @Typhoon Tip mentioned it several pages back. The 500 mb lows never phase, they cross each others tracks, the northern wave shoots ESE into the Atlantic and the southern wave goes due north and merges into that huge low over northern Canada. I'm sure it's happened before but that can't happen that often...

The bigger issue with shortwaves in the models these days seems to be accurately sampling and ingesting the data on them as they come ashore and being able to forecast what they do with this very progressive flow regime that we've had for what seems to be an extended period of time now... they seem to be crossing the country pretty quickly, I think it takes a while for the modeling to catch up with them in terms of forecasting snow, etc...

Says every bankrupt gambler...

You meant "not with that latitude!"

I made sure to post the good stuff - we need it after this storm.

Though more appropriate for this storm...

Yeah this airmass overhead is just “weird”, light north winds overnight, a storm to are east, brutal cold to our north, and still temps from from 850 down are above freezing…

This is definitely having an influence on our weather, for sure... that being said, if you go here and review the maps, the gulf stream has been above normal since at least 1996: https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/data3/50km/image/twiceweekly/ssta/global/

Not just that. The models can only account for deterministic factors that humans can program into them, and the limited number of observations that feed into the baselines to generate the model output. There might be factors in modeling we're not accounting for yet that influence the weather, and we're not observing the weather in every location on the planet every second of the day for data input. So while the analogs might look "perfect" there are clearly other factors in play making this storm behave differently. The models either aren't seeing something or the atmospheric conditions, somewhere, are different than the analogs, causing this storm to behave as forecasted.

Looks like maybe a couple of inches of slush that get washed away for me. Enjoy that jack in NNE!

So where else can we discuss the scientific characteristics of this specific storm? LOL… I’m enjoying the discussion !

It’s a tool in the toolbox…

I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as trolling but instead excessive optimism for a specific weather outcome.

To me looks like more members east at 18z, but the members that are west at 18z are farther west than 12z…

Can anyone explain what's going on with the pattern overall? Maybe it's something I'm noticing just now that's more common, or maybe it's different, but when you zoom out and do the Northern Hemisphere or North Atlantic views on the models, all the waves are cutting west instead of going out to sea. Is that just a bad orientation of the NAO causing that? Just referencing the latest op runs 500mb view and you see every wave of low pressure just rotating north in the Davis Straight instead of out into the Atlantic... for almost the entire 240/384... it piqued my interest...

Notable that the GFS and CMC have been in tandem on the Friday and Monday storms now for several cycles. Subtle differences but very similar outcomes/tracks...

Man, the CFS looks cold. Only a few above average days all the way through the first week of Feb. Not used to seeing that much cold actually forecasted on the CFS for the US, so it was noticeable.

If anyone is really really bored, feel free to check out my Twitch stream for a WS4000 simulator I setup, for fun and nostalgia... https://www.twitch.tv/riretrowx Just the Providence, RI forecast on loop with sappy 80's/90's instrumental music. I played around with it last year, decided to get it going again. For those that don't already know, the WS4000 was the device that cable companies used at their "head-ends" to inject the Local Forecast into their Weather Channel feeds. The theme being used is circa 1991. Enjoy!

Yeah winds have been gusty here all day too.