February 2026 Medium/ Long Range Discussion: Buckle Up!

[GreyHat]

1 minute ago, stormtracker said:

Da fuck talk up this early for? Insomnia is my excuse. Ain’t been to sleep yet

Insomnia for what? Myself was due to being Furlough again.

[GreyHat]

23 minutes ago, Ji said:

No I think he was looking at this

JI your correct, as I grab it and didn't see that it had 3 average.  My bust.

ICON 6z says move south for qpf, nice hole of no qpf.

[TSSN+]

15 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

The overnight runs are pretty bad for "decent" snow chances considering cold temps. I just wonder if those 5H anomaly maps that look so great aren't just going to end up with a storm passing to our west with front end snow to rain, then cold and dry once the cold front passes. I say this because it's just an average and bad things can happen during an otherwise decent averaged period, we saw it advertised last year with no results, and ensemble temps by the end of the current forecasts are warming. I also see the Niña fighting hard to hang on despite it's ultimate demise. I'm not calling fail, I'm just skeptical of those ensemble 5H patterns resulting in snow.

That’s the normal 

[GreyHat]

Euro AI looks little like the ICON 6z

[Blizzard of 93]

6z AI Euro looks active with chances with most of this snow taking place between day 11 & 15.

[Blizzard of 93]

4 minutes ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

6z AI Euro looks active with chances with most of this snow taking place between day 11 & 15.

Here are some 6z Euro Ai 24 hr snapshots to get a better idea of potential windows.

[Heisy]

The overnight runs are pretty bad for "decent" snow chances considering cold temps. I just wonder if those 5H anomaly maps that look so great aren't just going to end up with a storm passing to our west with front end snow to rain, then cold and dry once the cold front passes. I say this because it's just an average and bad things can happen during an otherwise decent averaged period, we saw it advertised last year with no results, and ensemble temps by the end of the current forecasts are warming. I also see the Niña fighting hard to hang on despite it's ultimate demise. I'm not calling fail, I'm just skeptical of those ensemble 5H patterns resulting in snow.
Edit: I'm referring to long range.

After whatever happens next week I think we’re shutout until around mid month, 15th-end of the month should open back up opportunities. At least that’s how it’s looking currently.

[RevWarReenactor]

6z gfs advertises the fear; cold dry followed by warm and rain in the extended, 

[dailylurker]

1 minute ago, RevWarReenactor said:

6z gfs advertises the fear; cold dry followed by warm and rain in the extended, 

Good thing there's 0 chance the gfs is correct about anything. It's the confusion model. It just adds confusion to the forecast. I stopped even checking the gfs. I just wait every 12 hours for the Euro. 

[blizzardmeiser]

9 minutes ago, RevWarReenactor said:

6z gfs advertises the fear; cold dry followed by warm and rain in the extended, 

That is what we do best. 

[aldie 22]

12 minutes ago, RevWarReenactor said:

6z gfs advertises the fear; cold dry followed by warm and rain in the extended, 

I don't know 6z looks pretty active back this way 

[Terpeast]

Pattern still looks good. We’re not shut out, albeit a few days of a break (which we need haha)

[clueless]

It certainly doesn’t look terrible. We’ll warm eventually but still have cold in place when it counts. Timing, luck yadayada. I’ll be happy with some mid week flakes to top off the glacier. 

[Weather Will]

Just released Canadian seasonal for January 2027!  Will be rocking next year!

[WxUSAF]

6z euro is ~1" Tuesday night and ~1" Friday night.  Nice little pack refreshers.  

[snowfan]

1 minute ago, WxUSAF said:

6z euro is ~1" Tuesday night and ~1" Friday night.  Nice little pack refreshers.  

Your Friday front just won’t go away on guidance. Gotta reel that one in.

[WxUSAF]

Just now, snowfan said:

Your Friday front just won’t go away on guidance. Gotta reel that one in.

Tuesday night is mine!  I'm thinking of a rebrand though: from "WxUSAF's shitty frontal passage" to "WxUSAF's weak-ass wave".  Thoughts?

[GreyHat]

1 hour ago, RevWarReenactor said:

6z gfs advertises the fear; cold dry followed by warm and rain in the extended, 

Unfortunately that's seems to happen a lot. The long range forecast including Euro AI show precip around the 13-15. At the moment not a lot. As you pointed out, Delaware and Maryland (at least where I work) will be in the upper 30s and around 40 with chance of rain, freezing rain and possibly of snow mix.

The Euro AI advertising during it's entire 6z run snow growth mainly PA and western Maryland. 

 

[WesternFringe]

1 hour ago, dailylurker said:

Good thing there's 0 chance the gfs is correct about anything. It's the confusion model. It just adds confusion to the forecast. I stopped even checking the gfs. I just wait every 12 hours for the Euro. 

The GFS nailed precipitation type in the last storm far better than the Euro for most of Central Virginia. The Euro insisted on .85” of freezing rain, but the GFS said no you will get all sleet after the changeover. The GFS was right and the Euro was wrong. We got zero freezing rain and instead got snow followed by sleet only.

.85” of freezing rain vs 0” is a huge difference in outcome regarding travel, power lines, trees, etc.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

"Odds blood this club wants cheering up!  Sink me, the place is a mausoleum!"  (From the 1934 version of "The Scarlet Pimpernel")

Sorry, couldn't resist the quote!  The mood in here is almost insanely low, however!  Yeah, I get that people are disappointed that we missed out on the big storm in the southeast, but really, it was only a small number of Euro and GFS runs the other week that were showing that we might get hammered as well.  For the most part, guidance wasn't all that favorable for us, and we'd be on the northern fringes at best.  We were hoping for incremental "improvements" to give us something.  I mean, this isn't like the event last February that was literally whisked away near the last minute.  Or the pattern shown for days and weeks for February 2024 in the extended ensembles, with this epic classic look, everyone was talking about how that would give us a HECS, etc., and then...it flipped to showing crap and that February was rather warm and uneventful.  And even now, people want to argue that our event last weekend was a relative "fail" because it sleeted for hours rather than all or nearly all snow.  I can also get that, to an extent, but come on.  An area-wide 6-12" combined snow and sleet that turned into a literal glacier.  Hell, I can walk on top of the snow and not even have my feet sink into it; like walking on regular pavement (though slipperier)!  We've now had a week-plus straight of well below freezing temperatures, and the upcoming week looks cold (though not as cold as last week) with perhaps a bit of a refresher light amount mid-week.  When's the last time we had nearly 2 straight weeks of deep winter at that level?  But people want to say it's a waste, because we didn't get a foot or more from one or two events.  Will it warm up or relax after the next week?  Yeah, and that's not really much of a surprise.  We're not going to get a solid month or more of cold around these parts.  As long as there's a lot of cold lurking up in Canada and we see those 1030+ highs around, and given the overall indications in the longwave pattern, I still have to think we're in a good spot through early March.  But even if nothing much happens, this past week or so was still rather amazing!

[NorthArlington101]

The GFS nailed precipitation type in the last storm far better than the Euro for most of Central Virginia. The Euro insisted on .85” of freezing rain, but the GFS said no you will get all sleet after the changeover. The GFS was right and the Euro was wrong. We got zero freezing rain and instead got snow followed by sleet only.
.85” of freezing rain vs 0” is a huge difference in outcome regarding travel, power lines, trees, etc.

Every model has their strengths and weaknesses. The Euro apparently can’t handle sleet/freezing rain. The 3k is bad at WAA precip total. The GFS isn’t a functional model. Gotta use your tools right.

[WesternFringe]

3 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

Every model has their strengths and weaknesses. The Euro apparently can’t handle sleet/freezing rain. The 3k is bad at WAA precip total. The GFS isn’t a functional model. Gotta use your tools right.

I agree that each model has strengths and weaknesses, which is why I think the GFS still has a role to play.  I never bought the Euro’s freezing rain depiction, so I leaned on its track and precip amounts but leaned on the GFS for precip type before the mesos came into range.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

1 minute ago, WesternFringe said:

I agree that each model has strengths and weaknesses, which is why I think the GFS still has a role to play.  I never bought the Euro’s freezing rain depiction, so I leaned on its track and precip amounts but leaned on the GFS for precip type before the mesos came into range.

I thought a lot of the whole freezing rain vs. sleet issue was more how various vendors (TT, Pivotal, etc.) displayed that, or whatever algorithm they used to differentiate the two.  For instance, I know on TT for whatever reason, it just displays the ICON as "rain" even when it's clearly some other non-snow frozen/freezing  precipl  But maybe the actual Euro soundings indicated freezing rain as opposed to sleet, which would be a totally different thing of course.