January 24-26: Miracle or Mirage JV/Banter Thread!

[SnowenOutThere]

2 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Nina MECS for us are really rare for a reason. Northern stream just so rarely plays nice. This is still going to be a good or great storm though! Still probably top tier for a Nina.

I know but man I don't remember a single storm over a foot well. So to me we're using a one in ten year setup and it failed because... too much phasing. What the fuck. Since I've started this hobby we couldn't buy phasing to save my life when we needed it. Look at it from my or @bncho's perspective. We have tracked storms for years now and never once have we gotten trends that don't hurt us from day five in. We've seen now two extremely good chances of a major snowstorm within day five fall apart (ofc this year's example is less extreme, though it had an even better signal). It sucks, living through this back to back years makes me want to force myself to change hobbies because it just isn't worth any time investment. It sucks man and though I'll take a dynamic sleety mess cause its cool I'll be honest if my whole time tracking is anything to go by the worst outcome will happen and it'll some NAM outrunning situation. I mean why is it that when watching a major storm and something goes the wrong way (0z run Wednesday) we just aren't ever able to recover even incrementally. Sorry for the rant but man I'm just tired of always watching things fall apart. 

[mattie g]

WHY WON'T THE LOW JUST F*CKING TRANSFER WHEN IT GETS TO TENNESSEE?!?!

[H2O]

13 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Mrs WxUSAF confirms it’s crazy out there with people getting groceries and gas. 
 

THEY will be wrong again because THEY said we’re getting 2 feet!

[clskinsfan]

49 minutes ago, Scraff said:

Happy hour apparently started early! Some guy just bought me a drink from across the bar too. I kicked him my digits to see where it goes. 936-1212. I told him my name was snow…
 

 

I'm on it too brother. My son got me a German beer sampler for Christmas. Been drinking one every Thursday and Saturday. Then stacking the whiskey on top. Been really good. 

[H2O]

1 minute ago, mattie g said:

WHY WON'T THE LOW JUST F*CKING TRANSFER WHEN IT GETS TO TENNESSEE?!?!

why would you expect anything to go the way we want in 2026?  Just look at how the year has started.  January is 300 days long

[nj2va]

8 minutes ago, Ephesians2 said:

Blacksburg is really bullish still. 

What in the actual fuck is this? At first I thought you superimposed it. This looks terrible lol

[mattie g]

16 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Mrs WxUSAF confirms it’s crazy out there with people getting groceries and gas. 
 

THEY will be wrong again because THEY said we’re getting 2 feet!

THEY sure did! Easy job THEY have!

[mattie g]

1 minute ago, H2O said:

why would you expect anything to go the way we want in 2026?  Just look at how the year has started.  January is 300 days long

2025 was like 3650 days long, so this tracks.

[stormy]

If the Euro is right.  Tens of thousands of Virginians will be suffering by Sunday or Monday because of no power and no heat............................

[WxUSAF]

11 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

I feel like psuhoff conjures the demons of failure each time frankly with his always looking for the failure mode. It’s not rational but I’ve decided I’m right.

He speaks the beast into existence 

[clskinsfan]

15 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

I feel like psuhoff conjures the demons of failure each time frankly with his always looking for the failure mode. It’s not rational but I’ve decided I’m right.

All while he smiles with his ground white. But seriously I have learned more about weather from him than probably anyone else on this site. 

[WxUSAF]

12 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

I know but man I don't remember a single storm over a foot well. So to me we're using a one in ten year setup and it failed because... too much phasing. What the fuck. Since I've started this hobby we couldn't buy phasing to save my life when we needed it. Look at it from my or @bncho's perspective. We have tracked storms for years now and never once have we gotten trends that don't hurt us from day five in. We've seen now two extremely good chances of a major snowstorm within day five fall apart (ofc this year's example is less extreme, though it had an even better signal). It sucks, living through this back to back years makes me want to force myself to change hobbies because it just isn't worth any time investment. It sucks man and though I'll take a dynamic sleety mess cause its cool I'll be honest if my whole time tracking is anything to go by the worst outcome will happen and it'll some NAM outrunning situation. I mean why is it that when watching a major storm and something goes the wrong way (0z run Wednesday) we just aren't ever able to recover even incrementally. Sorry for the rant but man I'm just tired of always watching things fall apart. 

Yeah I feel all that. This is a pretty shitty hobby and we’re in a historic snow drought. My son asked me something similar last weekend “why does it always get worse for snow?” Lol. 
 

Don’t have much useful advice except take a step back for your own mental health. 18z euro yesterday sorta triggered me for some reason and I just put my phone away at 7pm for the rest of the night. I wish I had the strength to just ignore everything until snow starts falling Saturday evening lol. 

[Scraff]

12 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

I'm on it too brother. My son got me a German beer sampler for Christmas. Been drinking one every Thursday and Saturday. Then stacking the whiskey on top. Been really good. 

Love all things Euro beers. German and Czech beers in particular. That’s a great gift though. Your son knows what’s up! 

[SnowenOutThere]

Just now, WxUSAF said:

Don’t have much useful advice except take a step back for your own mental health. 18z euro yesterday sorta triggered me for some reason and I just put my phone away at 7pm for the rest of the night. I wish I had the strength to just ignore everything until snow starts falling Saturday evening lol. 

Honestly, I think next snowstorm I should block all weather sites and just let it ride till two days beforehand. The 0z runs Wednesday ruined me a bit and I forced myself to not look till 12z which helped me accept that its sleet town. I just wish that when I saw a singular model run that was bad for us it wasn't a death sentence. It's like we need every single run to show the jackpot and any deviation becomes our reality. 

[Maestrobjwa]

4 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Yeah I feel all that. This is a pretty shitty hobby and we’re in a historic snow drought. My son asked me something similar last weekend “why does it always get worse for snow?” Lol. 
 

Don’t have much useful advice except take a step back for your own mental health. 18z euro yesterday sorta triggered me for some reason and I just put my phone away at 7pm for the rest of the night. I wish I had the strength to just ignore everything until snow starts falling Saturday evening lol. 

Maaaan you ain't lying. I think I'm reaching that point today. It's like everything gets more complicated, can barely keep up with what "trend" we need to look for, all the "we need this to do that but not to fast, or slow, or north, or south...oh now here's another fail scenario"....bruh I'm tired. That's why any prospect of tracking a storm for next weekend just makes me like ugghhh I wanna just turn it all off and wait till next Friday, lol Again...TIRED

Ninja'd by @SnowenOutThere on that sentence, lol

[WxUSAF]

2 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Honestly, I think next snowstorm I should block all weather sites and just let it ride till two days beforehand. The 0z runs Wednesday ruined me a bit and I forced myself to not look till 12z which helped me accept that its sleet town. I just wish that when I saw a singular model run that was bad for us it wasn't a death sentence. It's like we need every single run to show the jackpot and any deviation becomes our reality. 

Wish I had the willpower to do that! And this site sometimes…

Certainly feels like one bad run always starts a trend. 
 

 

[JakkelWx]

22 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

I know but man I don't remember a single storm over a foot well. So to me we're using a one in ten year setup and it failed because... too much phasing. What the fuck. Since I've started this hobby we couldn't buy phasing to save my life when we needed it. Look at it from my or @bncho's perspective. We have tracked storms for years now and never once have we gotten trends that don't hurt us from day five in. We've seen now two extremely good chances of a major snowstorm within day five fall apart (ofc this year's example is less extreme, though it had an even better signal). It sucks, living through this back to back years makes me want to force myself to change hobbies because it just isn't worth any time investment. It sucks man and though I'll take a dynamic sleety mess cause its cool I'll be honest if my whole time tracking is anything to go by the worst outcome will happen and it'll some NAM outrunning situation. I mean why is it that when watching a major storm and something goes the wrong way (0z run Wednesday) we just aren't ever able to recover even incrementally. Sorry for the rant but man I'm just tired of always watching things fall apart. 

It's every FUCKING YEAR now

[NorthArlington101]

Just now, SnowenOutThere said:

Honestly, I think next snowstorm I should block all weather sites and just let it ride till two days beforehand. The 0z runs Wednesday ruined me a bit and I forced myself to not look till 12z which helped me accept that its sleet town. I just wish that when I saw a singular model run that was bad for us it wasn't a death sentence. It's like we need every single run to show the jackpot and any deviation becomes our reality. 

I think this hobby suffers from the same issues that plague the world -- too much information, a rush to be first, a drive toward saying polarizing things to get attention. I can't come up with a solution to any of these problems other then some slight unplugging. I'm not sure there was a way to have watched this storm and not feel at least a little rugpulled/frustrated, though. Sometimes that just happens.

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

1 minute ago, WxUSAF said:

Wish I had the willpower to do that! And this site sometimes…

Certainly feels like one bad run always starts a trend. 
 

 

Yea it really does, feels Like it never trends the way we want towards game time.  But yeah it’s been pretty low snow for 10 years now. 

[Maestrobjwa]

1 minute ago, WxUSAF said:

Wish I had the willpower to do that! And this site sometimes…

Certainly feels like one bad run always starts a trend. 
 

 

And the thing is it's not even "the elephant" now...we got the cold but it always feels like there's 50,000 bad variations that can happen. Like random crap...stuff just finds a way to fall apart and I just don't get it.

[clskinsfan]

6 minutes ago, Scraff said:

Love all things Euro beers. German and Czech beers in particular. That’s a great gift though. Your son knows what’s up! 

Yeah. The Euro's do a lot of things better if I'm being honest. Beer being the top of my list though.

[Scraff]

Just now, clskinsfan said:

Yeah. The Euro's do a lot of things better if I'm being honest. Beer being the top of my list though.

Weather models being a close 2nd!? lol. 

[baltosquid]

Ya know, obviously I want the GFS to be right for the snow BUT I would love to see the apology forms roll out for it as well. Too bad it‘s probably caving as I type. Maybe. I haven’t looked!

[clskinsfan]

3 minutes ago, JakkelWx said:

It's every FUCKING YEAR now

I don't think this one is going to completely fall apart though. Won't be historic for snow. But it will be for the ice and temps. It's going to be cold a fuck bro. 

[WxUSAF]

4 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

I think this hobby suffers from the same issues that plague the world -- too much information, a rush to be first, a drive toward saying polarizing things to get attention. I can't come up with a solution to any of these problems other then some slight unplugging. I'm not sure there was a way to have watched this storm and not feel at least a little rugpulled/frustrated, though. Sometimes that just happens.

 

3 minutes ago, SomeguyfromTakomaPark said:

Yea it really does, feels Like it never trends the way we want towards game time.  But yeah it’s been pretty low snow for 10 years now. 

And we (probably) got it way better than the NC weenies…

Too much info is 100% a problem with this hobby. With the way models roll out now, there’s almost always a new model run to look at. Round the clock. Like a social media algorithm designed to keep you clicking. 
 

Most effective method for me is to put my phone in a different room and leave it there. Plan to do it again at 7pm tonight.

[NorthArlington101]

3 minutes ago, Siesta Key said:

At this range, the most important takeaway isn’t which deterministic model “won” a given cycle it’s that the system is operating near the limits of practical predictability.

We’re dealing with a classic multi-scale interaction problem: a southern-stream wave attempting to phase beneath a marginally progressive northern jet, while shallow cold air is governed almost entirely by boundary-layer processes that global models handle inconsistently. That combination alone guarantees volatility in guidance.

A few key points that matter more than snowfall maps:

• The synoptic signal for cyclogenesis is real height falls, jet coupling, and upstream trough geometry are not in question.
• The uncertainty lies almost exclusively in thermal evolution, not QPF generation.
• CAD retention and erosion are being driven by subtle pressure-ageostrophic balances that cannot be resolved well until the event enters the mesoscale window.

When models diverge like this especially between GFS-type schemes and RGEM/ICON it’s rarely because one “sees the storm” and the others don’t. It’s because they handle:

– diabatic cooling rates
– low-level cold air depth
– and latent heat feedback

very differently.

That’s why one run shows a robust sub-freezing boundary layer and another mixes it out in six hours.

Ensembles are telling the correct story: the atmosphere supports multiple plausible outcomes, all of which sit within a narrow solution space where small perturbations produce large sensible-weather differences. Until we see tighter clustering in 925–850 mb thicknesses and consistent pressure rises north of the system, confidence in p-type and accumulation will remain inherently limited.

Glad to know I can still detect a robot

[H2O]

HEY EVERYONE!!!

I just wanted to let you know I had random poster from florida posting in our storm thread on my bingo card!!!!  Achievement unlocked

[Nomz]

2 minutes ago, SomeguyfromTakomaPark said:

Yea it really does, feels Like it never trends the way we want towards game time.  But yeah it’s been pretty low snow for 10 years now. 

... if we want to go there, an extra .5-1C since the 1990s probably is impacting this storm. Imagine if the 0C contour was where the 1C contour was and so on. When you're riding the knife-edge like we are, it matters.

[clskinsfan]

I will say this though. After the week long hype about this. If it fails the non weather weenies will tune out for the rest of the winter. Which can be dangerous. 

[paulythegun]