Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,507
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    SnowHabit
    Newest Member
    SnowHabit
    Joined

Futility Thread - Winter 18/19


NorEastermass128
 Share

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Not even close tempwise or H5...you have a case with snowfall at the moment.

The rest doesn't matter, only snowfall does at the end of the day.  Seasonal forecasting is such a tough nut to crack, too much chaos.  You almost wonder if its best to just forecast for 500mb and maybe temperatures, and let the cards fall where they will with regards to snowfall.

On the sensible side, a winter like this to date is the same as 06-07 or 11-12 to many casual observers in SNE, even ones that are avid weather followers.  But that's half the fun I guess... like knowing the Red Sox have a chance at a championship team, but somehow nothing clicks and the team goes all chicken & beer.  Then you get a team with the same projected numbers has the right catalyst that leads to a 108 win season.

Or you get the team that should be great, sucks most of the season and goes on a 23-6 stretch in the final month to make the Wild Card game.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Snow88 said:

How does Boston only have 2.3 inches ? Who the hell measures the snow at Logan airport?

A couple of the measurements seemed low compared to the rest of the city. The mid November event seemed to have 2-3" elsewhere in the city but 1" at the airport. 1/20 seemed to have 3-4" in the city but again 1" at the airport. Most of Boston is probably 7-9" at this point like NYC is. Doesn't take away from the lameness of this "winter". 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

A couple of the measurements seemed low compared to the rest of the city. The mid November event seemed to have 2-3" elsewhere in the city but 1" at the airport. 1/20 seemed to have 3-4" in the city but again 1" at the airport. Most of Boston is probably 7-9" at this point like NYC is. Doesn't take away from the lameness of this "winter". 

This correct bad measurements are to blame for the most part but this has been a tremendously bad year either way..

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Wx has nothing to do with luck good or bad. It happens for scientific reasons , not because of luck 

LOL ok. We’ve mentioned it before. Luck as in being at the mercy of nuances where similar looks yield different outcomes. When you are near normal and extremely wet, you’ve had some bad breaks. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

LOL ok. We’ve mentioned it before. Luck as in being at the mercy of nuances where similar looks yield different outcomes. When you are near normal and extremely wet, you’ve had some bad breaks. 

Those bad breaks happen because of something atmospherically though. Not because it was bad luck . 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Those bad breaks happen because of something atmospherically though. Not because it was bad luck . 

I know that. My point as well as many others is that we’ve had similar looks in the past that’s yielded much better outcomes. Likewise we’ve had way worse looks actually yield snowier looks. When the gradient is 50-80 miles north....that’s just some shit luck.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's def a few in here who get triggered by the "luck" explanation. It's just a synonym for smaller scale nuances and not the hemispheric longwave pattern. 

You hear us all the time..:.what do we want to avoid? We want to avoid a death vortex over Alaska. Almost every single horrible ratter had one. 2011-2012, 2006-2007, 2001-2002, etc. This year we have EPO ridging there. We've been near normal for temps. You cannot blame the longwave pattern PNA scooter shitstreak stopping two snowstorms that DC got and we didn't or a rogue shortwave coming in and phasing at the last second to turn an overrunning event into a cutter...things like that will happen throughout a season but typically they even out. 

The flipping a coin analogy is a good one here. You expect to get some 50/50s in your favor but you also wouldn't be totally shocked if 8 heads and 1 tails comes up either when you are dealing with a sample size under 10. You know that those sort of streaks do happen and it has nothing to do with the coin. 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

There's def a few in here who get triggered by the "luck" explanation. It's just a synonym for smaller scale nuances and not the hemispheric longwave pattern. 

You hear us all the time..:.what do we want to avoid? We want to avoid a death vortex over Alaska. Almost every single horrible ratter had one. 2011-2012, 2006-2007, 2001-2002, etc. This year we have EPO ridging there. We've been near normal for temps. You cannot blame the longwave pattern PNA scooter shitstreak stopping two snowstorms that DC got and we didn't or a rogue shortwave coming in and phasing at the last second to turn an overrunning event into a cutter...things like that will happen throughout a season but typically they even out. 

The flipping a coin analogy is a good one here. You expect to get some 50/50s in your favor but you also wouldn't be totally shocked if 8 heads and 1 tails comes up either when you are dealing with a sample size under 10. You know that those sort of streaks do happen and it has nothing to do with the coin. 

I didn't hear much complaining about luck from the E MA folks in 2015...:o

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2/2
BOS @ 2.3”. 
Midweek event looking wet. Next threat likely 10+ days out. We’ll be nearing mid month with little to no change in numbers. Futility odds increasing day by day, week by week. 
I'm way less than 2" in se mass. (underhanded pitch)

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just don't totally buy the luck concept for the 80s pattern...i.e. cutter, arctic, cutter, arctic, rinse-repeat. Yeah, temps are near normal and we've been very wet, but it's because the cutters deluge us and then a Molly Ringwald airmass settles in. It's not like we're getting 2" of QPF from events that we're thisclose to getting 20" of snow from. It's 2-3" of liquid thanks to dews in the 50s.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, powderfreak said:

The rest doesn't matter, only snowfall does at the end of the day.  Seasonal forecasting is such a tough nut to crack, too much chaos.  You almost wonder if its best to just forecast for 500mb and maybe temperatures, and let the cards fall where they will with regards to snowfall.

On the sensible side, a winter like this to date is the same as 06-07 or 11-12 to many casual observers in SNE, even ones that are avid weather followers.  But that's half the fun I guess... like knowing the Red Sox have a chance at a championship team, but somehow nothing clicks and the team goes all chicken & beer.  Then you get a team with the same projected numbers has the right catalyst that leads to a 108 win season.

Or you get the team that should be great, sucks most of the season and goes on a 23-6 stretch in the final month to make the Wild Card game.

I'm sorry, this has been nothing like 2011-2012  or 2006-2007 to me. The causal observer, sure....but to anyone with a modicum of meteorological intellect...nope. And this is not about my outlook, either...that has been an unequivocal failure to this point. I get that. Not trying to argue that. Raindance has been better. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...