MillvilleWx

Just catching up to what has transpired model wise today. It was a semi-lost day for me as I’ve been having some jaw issues from God knows what over the past several weeks. Went to orthodontist and they ruled out TMJ, so it’s off to the Dentist I go for whatever time they can take me next week. Been a long day of dealing with a flare up. Ugh Anywho, looking at guidance and there’s still two distinct camps for this one; a stronger surface reflection that delays the CAA regime and causes a sharp southern edge in the QPF distribution which negative feedbacks to lower snow totals until well NW of the fall line. The second option is the stronger Arctic boundary with less amplification of the surface reflection allowing for CAA regime to take shape with improving PBL as we step through the afternoon, a testament to the magnitude of the airmass that’s going to be making waves in these parts. The consensus I’m seeing is the over amplified cluster is losing steam with the GEM suite being the primary drivers for this scenario. The EC/GFS/NAMNest/GEFS/ECENS/EC AIGS ML output are in convergence mode with now only minor deviations in the thermal alignment/positioning, as well as the total QPF being depicted. Considering some solid 85H FGEN progs being depicted within the latest NWP iterations, it’s likely there will be some good mesoscale banding structures that will transpire during the height of the storm, and that will coincide with the bleeding arctic airmass leading to slight improvement of SLR’s (Snow-liquid ratios) even as we step into the afternoon. This is not a classic setup, but there have been multiple cases over the past 20-25 years of these types of events with good wave timing to take advantage of the advection paradigm while we get the better forcing intersecting at the same juncture. My initial forecast has been for 3-6” w/ locally up to 8” for places along and NW of I-95 with a southern inflection around I-66. 2-5” forecast for southeast of there, including the DC metro with a max of 6” plausible within any areas that get multiple banding structures over the course of the event. I feel this is a good storm for places NW of the fall line with higher ratios between 10-12:1 to start ending closer to 14-16:1 at the very end of the storm with some locally higher SLR’s within those climo favored areas along Parrs Ridge from NW MoCo up through Mt Airy into Carroll County. This is the type of wave that tends to get these areas pretty well, so unless we see a significant deviation in surface low placement within the 15-21z window on Sunday, I think my initial thoughts will remain steadfast with potentially some minor adjustments pending QPF output as models fine tune as we move closer. Looks like a beautiful snow day incoming with playoff football to make it feel even more like deep winter. I’ll try to chime in again as we get closer. Hopefully my mouth pain can be solved by next week. I’m tired of this -ish. Have a great night

Majority of the ECENS has members in the primary cluster that according to cluster analysis contribute to 41% of the total ensemble suite (ECENS/GEFS/GEPS). Surprisingly, the ECENS is strictly in just two camps; the primary camp with a decent hit and then another with very little. GEFS is sort of similar, although much of the GEFS has something appreciable with only 6% of the members showing very little. GEPS is distributed a bit better than the other two, but still showing 45-50% within the primary camp and 20-25% in the more amped scenario. I think we are approaching a decent consensus at 2 day leads. If the 12z doesn't sway too hard, we should start getting a clearing picture.

It's the range map. Typically the ranges are the 1st and 3rd quartile (25th and 75th percentile). I would say 3-6" w/ local to 8" as a good call for a lot of the sub. Likely more 2-5" along and southeast of I-95, but we will see how it shakes out as we get close.

Great write-up as always! Looks like we are seeing the proverbial “goal posts” among the deterministic and can assess the finer details likely either this afternoon, or by tonight. Ensemble spread is muted compared to yesterday. Looks like a beautiful day of snow and football this Sunday. Couldn’t be more stoked for that. I’ll try my best to follow what you volleyball set to me today

Ooooo. Baccarat! I see you too are a man of culture.

Season Total: 11.6”

True dusting in Edgewater area. Was still flurrying as I went to and from the store. Beautiful out

I keep an eye on it now along with the rest of the suite of models. Been pleasantly surprised at how it’s been performing.

Me and the Met on the QPF desk had lots of conversation while doing the forecast today. We both were taking note over the past several days of the AIFS remaining steadfast. I felt it was necessary to add to the disco as AI has been around for a while now and we have verification scores, and we have enough data to see trends over the past 1-1.5 years. It’s been a great tool to see where things could trend. When the AIFS is locked in, it has been really helpful. It was really good during Hurricane season and so far it’s been decent within mid-latitude evolution. Still not perfect by any means, but it’s very useful in the right scenario. This seems like it has some merit. I will say that the AI isn’t going to replicate banding structures very well and the QPF output is smoothed compared to dynamical output. That said, I believe it has the right idea and some minor shifts could still occur, but I think we have the main synoptic evolution down. Just down to finer details and thermal profiles.

You’re welcome

Light snow in Edgewater area. Man, what an awesome winter this has been for the lowlands and surrounds. Let’s keep this rolling thru Sunday, shall we?

First step is typically calibration, but sometimes it can just be in a bad spot for sunshine when it's directly on it. It's tough to really find a sweet spot for a weather station unless you have a huge yard or open field where it's at its best. I'd calibrate first, then try shifting if it still has that issue.

Your lips to God's ears....and hopefully my backyard

I'm telling you guys, when the AI is this locked in, everyone should take note. It's not a true dynamical model that can sway with regular perturbations like a ECMWF/GFS/(Insert Model here), it's basically a really well programmed analog with a historical dataset that it references on each run. When it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

I’ll move this over here so that it doesn’t get lost as it pertains to the coming setup.

It doesn’t mean this is a lock, guarentee, etc…but that’s a pretty good sign at lead that it might be on to something. Now, this pattern incoming is very complex, so it might not grasp the magnitude of what’s to come, but you want to see run-to-run consistency on the AI, that’s for sure. Hopefully it’s seeing something that the operational ECMWF can connect with as we move closer. We shall see. A good experiment for this pattern. I’ll be keeping tabs.

I said this is a good snow pattern We should get some snow out of this. Whether it’s “FOLKS” worthy or not is up to some timing/phasing luck and positioning of the thermal gradient in the right spot. GFS was pretty damn close as @psuhoffmanmentioned. ECMWF was on the money. Should be a fun 7-10 days of tracking once again. Winter is still rolling along. We still have February to go too.

That’s really impressive for moonlight. Wow

That was @WinterWxLuvr I’m not sure what happened to him. I enjoyed his posts.

Popping in to say that’s a sweet 5H vort panel during the storm height. Hopefully this has legs. This is a good period for snow prospects.

Crazy game. The Mid Atlantic is a great spot to be for football fans.

Season Total: 11.6”

Absolutely! Would love to meet both you and @wxdude64 for a relaxing weekend with some cold drinks. Will absolutely keep in touch with both of you guys so we can plan a meet up. Would also love a good spot for some grub, so feel free to pass on those recommendations

Pretty simple forecast here. 0.5-2" for basically everyone at this juncture. Not really much room for boom potential. Boom is probably 2-3", so there might be some WWA's that come from this one. I won't even be here for any of it, so please enjoy any flakes that fall. I will be living vicariously