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Jan 16/17 Event Obs/Disc


mappy

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Just now, clskinsfan said:

LMAO! you just cant make this stuff up anymore out here. It is snowing literally 8 miles from me right now. And that is going to miss my area AGAIN. Followed by a dry patch and a coastal taking over to rob all of the moisture to my south. I would kill for an inch at this point.  I am just sick of this pathetic winter. Might need to take a break for a while. The RGEM and just about everything else folded to the Euro like a cheap suit. Disregarding the Euro when it shows fail is a lesson that should be learned for all of us. It is Dr. No for a reason.

Wasn't the EURO the one that went super in on this event?

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11 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

LMAO! you just cant make this stuff up anymore out here. It is snowing literally 8 miles from me right now. And that is going to miss my area AGAIN. Followed by a dry patch and a coastal taking over to rob all of the moisture to my south. I would kill for an inch at this point.  I am just sick of this pathetic winter. Might need to take a break for a while. The RGEM and just about everything else folded to the Euro like a cheap suit. Disregarding the Euro when it shows fail is a lesson that should be learned for all of us. It is Dr. No for a reason.

But how do you know which version is right?  It threw out both our best and worst case scenarios in alternating runs over the 3 days leading up to the event.  That is why its been unhelpful to making a valid forecast.  Yea one of its progs turned out to be right but when its showing every possible outcome what good is that?  I guess you could validly argue that once it settled in on multiple runs of "crap" at very close leads that it became believable but by then all the other guidance was headed that way and even without it we would have seen the writing on the wall and what good is a global that only settles on a stable solution 24 hours out?  I guess given the pattern we should just assume the worst case scenario runs are the accurate ones but persistence forecasting is lazy and risky because eventually the exception will show up and you will bust badly just assuming every storm will repeat.  Patterns don't give you advanced warning when they are about to flip.  Frankly even this event isnt really the status quo as the last few events screwed over some places of interior northeast that are getting nailed by this one.  Those using persistence up there would have failed this week.  

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20 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

LMAO! you just cant make this stuff up anymore out here. It is snowing literally 8 miles from me right now. And that is going to miss my area AGAIN. Followed by a dry patch and a coastal taking over to rob all of the moisture to my south. I would kill for an inch at this point.  I am just sick of this pathetic winter. Might need to take a break for a while. The RGEM and just about everything else folded to the Euro like a cheap suit. Disregarding the Euro when it shows fail is a lesson that should be learned for all of us. It is Dr. No for a reason.

The GFS was never in this event more than a frontal passage.  The Euro was all over the place.  I guess we all wear rose color glasses some times.

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Just now, Cobalt said:

Obviously a bit of bias there, but GFS did suggest 6" for just West of that area.

Yeah I saw that.  It’s not the first event where RIC stomped us.  I remember an event some years back it started snowing in the metro area and then poof it collapsed on itself and RIC got slammed.  Coastal robbed the moisture.  Sure this will happen same way.  

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Just now, BristowWx said:

Yeah I saw that.  It’s not the first event where RIC stomped us.  I remember an event some years back it started snowing in the metro area and then poof it collapsed on itself and RIC got slammed.  Coastal robbed the moisture.  Sure this will happen same way.  

Didn't they get a decent event out of March 6 2013?

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2 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

Didn't they get a decent event out of March 6 2013?

Yes, h5 was closed off to the west of RIC and the SLP did a SE jog off the coast instead of east. The Euro was the only model showing the SE jog but it still busted with QPF here. The dynamics went off the rails down by RIC and west of town and it took all the punch out of the WAA part of the storm here. Then the CCB got robbed due to the really unusual SE jog of SLP off the coast. All models blew the QPF part. That's something we almost always see with closed ULL systems. There are ALWAYS surprises. Some good and some not good. It's the nature of the beast. Math can only predict so much when it comes to closed off/energetic storms. 

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2 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Yes, h5 was closed off to the west of RIC and the SLP did a SE jog off the coast instead of east. The Euro was the only model showing the SE jog but it still busted with QPF here. The dynamics went off the rails down by RIC and west of town and it took all the punch out of the WAA part of the storm here. Then the CCB got robbed due to the really unusual SE jog of SLP off the coast. All models blew the QPF part. That's something we almost always see with closed ULL systems. There are ALWAYS surprises. Some good and some not good. It's the nature of the beast. Math can only predict so much when it comes to closed off/energetic storms. 

That storm was a confluence of so many fails at once.  The qpf didnt bust HORRIBLY but when dealing with marginal temps the difference between heavy snow and 32 degrees vs light/moderate snow and 35 degrees is HUGE.  Had we been 5 degrees colder it still would have been a 5-8" snowfall based on qpf so a minor bust given predictions but not the total fail it became.  Furthermore if the upper low had been a little north, or the surface low not sunk southeast for some reason, or the convection not robbed the moisture transport....so much conspired to go wrong.  Sound familiar? LOL

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For us folks 25 miles and further south of DC, our only hope is to get into a northern-most band from the coastal. The limit as how far north that will be on most models is just south of Fredericksburg.  A 30 mile adjustment isn't far fetched, but I think the writing is on the wall. 

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3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That storm was a confluence of so many fails at once.  The qpf didnt bust HORRIBLY but when dealing with marginal temps the difference between heavy snow and 32 degrees vs light/moderate snow and 35 degrees is HUGE.  Had we been 5 degrees colder it still would have been a 5-8" snowfall based on qpf so a minor bust given predictions but not the total fail it became.  Furthermore if the upper low had been a little north, or the surface low not sunk southeast for some reason, or the convection not robbed the moisture transport....so much conspired to go wrong.  Sound familiar? LOL

I'd take the same setup again any day. No two storms do the same thing. That one conspired to do everything in its power to hurt but other ones do pretty well. Vday 14 comes to mind. The mixing/lull and drip was well modeled but the progression worked great for some. I got 3.5" from the ULL pass for a total of 16.5". That storm broke in my favor. March 13 did not. lol

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59 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Right on que the WWA goes out: https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/a/a.php?i=18458592

Is it spring yet?

LWX seems to think different in their quick morning AFD update:

.NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/...
11 AM UPDATE: A steady light snow continues over northwestern
Maryland. 12z model guidance trickling in has raised confidence
enough to hoist a Winter Weather Advisory for central Virginia
(higher amounts/better forcing) and the metro areas (impactful
for the Wednesday morning commute despite lighter amounts around
1 inch). The central Shenandoah Valley appears it will be in a
bit of a snow shadow in the lee of the ridges, and this is
showed nicely in latest hi-res guidance. Therefore, left those
areas out of the advisory for now with generally around an inch
expected tonight. Meanwhile, patchy freezing fog is being
observed over the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, but this
should abate as temperatures warm above freezing through about
noon or so.

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4 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'd take the same setup again any day. No two storms do the same thing. That one conspired to do everything in its power to hurt but other ones do pretty well. Vday 14 comes to mind. The mixing/lull and drip was well modeled but the progression worked great for some. I got 3.5" from the ULL pass for a total of 16.5". That storm broke in my favor. March 13 did not. lol

Oh I agree.  People are sometimes too IMBY focused when the meso scale features that determine if you win or lose are often up to chance and chaos.  The rain snow line setting up 10 miles the wrong way is NOT a pattern problem.  The upper low missing you by 30 miles and robbing moisture is bad luck.  That same general pattern again could be a 10" snowstorm easy.  People that focus on IMBY sometimes miss how much chance factors into the results.  

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14 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Yes, h5 was closed off to the west of RIC and the SLP did a SE jog off the coast instead of east. The Euro was the only model showing the SE jog but it still busted with QPF here. The dynamics went off the rails down by RIC and west of town and it took all the punch out of the WAA part of the storm here. Then the CCB got robbed due to the really unusual SE jog of SLP off the coast. All models blew the QPF part. That's something we almost always see with closed ULL systems. There are ALWAYS surprises. Some good and some not good. It's the nature of the beast. Math can only predict so much when it comes to closed off/energetic storms. 

March 6, 2013......We got like 6-8" in Spotsylvania where I lived at the time. Talked to family up toward DC and it was just White Rain, that was a crazy day. Snowed pretty heavily for a time. Doubt this is similar around Fredericksburg, but down to the West of Richmond looks ok. I think I might be to high with my guess of 1.2" at EZF....

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4 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'd take the same setup again any day. No two storms do the same thing.

I agree.  If this plays out as currently modeled, we got some bad luck with this one.  But the setup was close to something better with just some small shifts.  As the Euro showed, there was a chance we could get some help from the second wave to make this a good event.  The GFS seemed to be trending that way but then stopped at 06z this morning.  C'est la vie.

If nothing else, this has been a fun event to track.  Watching all of the pieces come together has certainly been an education for me, and as usual I really appreciate all of the posters here who help explain to the rest of us what's going on.

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