The Jan 31 Potential: Stormtracker Failure or 'Tracker Trouncing

[SnowenOutThere]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

The most obvious reason is the lack of STj which is Nina related. But why are there not even some reasonable decent northern stream waves?  I don’t know. Honestly 

the pattern is suppressed so much right now we could even work with some NS only wave at times but even they are weak sauce 

Is it just cope to say they will show up as we get closer in? I know that in some of these patterns its a thing where we only see threats show up at shorter lead times but don't know if that applies here. 

[bncho]

2 minutes ago, Berlin1926 said:

Don't laugh.  I ask AI to evaluate these maps plus AFD from Wakefield and MC.

 

Surface low tracks: the ensembles are remarkably consistent

Across GEFS, EPS, and GEPS, the surface low at ~78–84 hrs is:

Well east of the Carolina coastline

Centered roughly east–southeast of Cape Hatteras

Deepening hard (tight isobars, strong gradient)

This is not noise anymore — this is ensemble convergence.

Key implication:

The storm is not trending inland.

It is not tucking under Virginia.

It is behaving like a classic Miller C / offshore bomb.

That matches:

Wakefield’s language (highest impacts coast, lower inland)

Morehead City’s confidence (ENC squarely in the core)

The Weather Risk video you transcribed (and honestly, he read this correctly)

2. The 500-mb pattern explains why Midlothian is struggling

Your last two panels (GEFS & EPS 500 mb heights/anomalies) are the smoking gun.

What we see:

A deep, vertically stacked closed low centered offshore

Strong negative height anomalies hugging the coast

A massive, locked-in Arctic high over the interior US

This matters because:

The upper low is not phasing over NC/VA

It pivots east, not north

Lift rotates around the offshore low instead of swinging inland

That means:

The deformation band (the real snow producer) is rotating around the coast, not expanding inland.

If that 500-mb low were 100–150 miles farther west, Richmond would be buried.

But it’s not. And the ensembles agree on that placement.

3. Precipitation fields: the inland cutoff is real

Look at your GEFS / GEPS accumulated precip panels:

Coastal plain: deep blues and greens (solid QPF)

I-95 corridor: sharp gradient

West of Richmond: rapidly falling totals

This is exactly the pattern where:

Coastal NC / Tidewater VA get crushed

Central VA sits near the western edge of the shield

Snowfall becomes rate-dependent and band-dependent

And that’s why your point forecast:

Mentions snow → mix → freezing rain

Never commits to high totals

Keeps PoPs high but totals modest

PoP answers “will something fall?”

Totals answer “will you be happy?”

Right now, the models say: yes to the first, shrug to the second.

4. Why Dinwiddie looked better than Midlothian (and why that hurts)

This part stings, but it’s important.

Dinwiddie:

Slightly farther south

Slightly closer to coastal moisture

Slightly colder profile longer

Midlothian:

Just north enough to flirt with dry slotting

Just inland enough to lose snow rates

Just close enough to the warm nose aloft to complicate p-type

That’s why your corrected forecast dropped from:

“plausible accumulation” → “1–3 inches possible” → “mixed bag”

You didn’t imagine it.

You crossed a real mesoscale boundary.

5. So… is Midlothian “lucky to get any snow”?

No — but you are on the wrong side of the ceiling.

Here’s the honest probability envelope right now:

≥0.5" snow: likely

1–3": plausible (especially Friday night / early Saturday)

4–6": requires a westward jog or stronger banding

6+": needs a fundamentally different storm (not supported by ensembles)

The key thing:

Nothing in these images shows a trend toward Midlothian improving.

The ensembles are stable, not chaotic.

Stability this far out is bad news for last-minute miracles.

6. Why snow lovers hate Miller C storms

This is the philosophical gut-punch.

Miller C storms:

Are meteorologically impressive

Produce insane winds and coastal snow

Look incredible on satellite

Punish inland gradient zones

They reward:

OBX

Tidewater

Eastern NC

They tease:

Richmond

Central VA

The Piedmont edge

You’re living that truth in real time.

Bottom line (said gently, but honestly)

You are not getting skunked.

You are also not getting a classic Richmond snowstorm.

What you are getting is:

A legit winter event

Cold enough for snow at times

Enough moisture for accumulation

But not enough overlap of lift + moisture + cold for a blockbuster

why did you have to seperate each sentence by pressing enter twice? this took up the whole page 

[psuhoffman]

OMFG can we stop with the AI Chat BS 

[CAPE]

Never occurred to me to look at the RGEM at this point but since Mt Holly mentioned it..

Not sure how much difference this makes but it is wester in the upper levels-  also at the end of its run.

 

[psuhoffman]

And who are these people posting this crap?  

[stormtracker]

14 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Gonna need another massive leap at 0z. We just have no time left and need massive changes. It’s just a tease. Enough to smoke Boston and maybe NYC and the coast.

Not sure why they didn't use my pic on the bus

[EHoffman]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

And who are these people posting this crap?  

They're also AI

[wxdude64]

38 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I’m fine. I’ll be in Vermont at my friends, drunk off my arse this weekend 

BTW, he’s the smart one. He was a meteorology student with me at PSU. Big snow weenie. So he bought a snowmobile farm on top of a mountain in Vermont that averages about 150” of snow.  

So that's where snowmobiles come from?? 

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, CAPE said:

Never occurred to me to look at the RGEM at this point but since Mt Holly mentioned it..

Not sure how much difference this makes but it is wester in the upper levels-  also at the end of its run.

 

Let me ask Gemini what it means 

[CAPE]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

Let me ask Gemini what it means 

lol

[Maestrobjwa]

32 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

After this we need a -AO Nino basically. What stacks the deck most would be to time up a west based Nino with a favorable solar and QBO. Problem is next year is likely to have unfavorable solar and QBO and early signs are east based. So…

Yeah I was wondering about that...looking at the ENSO threat there did seem to be some warming on that side (don't fully understand what I'm looking at, though, lol East based we are screwed and may as well not bother. And that would absolutely suck because we wasted the last niño we had, smh I hope we can find a way to get a KU somehow this year...because if not we could be waiting a lot longer. Because what comes after a strong nino but...two more ninas right? 

[Paleocene]

EPS MLSP, 12z left, 18z right.  deeper and Tuck "tucky" McTuckerson. sorry for potato quality but im lazy

 

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Never occurred to me to look at the RGEM at this point but since Mt Holly mentioned it..

Not sure how much difference this makes but it is wester in the upper levels-  also at the end of its run.

 

Yeah, it may not do much but I see the clear differences in there.  Not just the position of the H5 low center but looking just east of that, there's a more northward meridional bend on the height lines in the RDPS.

[benjammin]

So that's where snowmobiles come from?? 

When one snowmobile loves another snowmobile and they commit to each other...

Sent from my Pixel 10 Pro XL using Tapatalk

[WesternFringe]

10 minutes ago, Berlin1926 said:

Don't laugh.  I ask AI to evaluate these maps plus AFD from Wakefield and MC.

 

Surface low tracks: the ensembles are remarkably consistent

Across GEFS, EPS, and GEPS, the surface low at ~78–84 hrs is:

Well east of the Carolina coastline

Centered roughly east–southeast of Cape Hatteras

Deepening hard (tight isobars, strong gradient)

This is not noise anymore — this is ensemble convergence.

Key implication:

The storm is not trending inland.

It is not tucking under Virginia.

It is behaving like a classic Miller C / offshore bomb.

That matches:

Wakefield’s language (highest impacts coast, lower inland)

Morehead City’s confidence (ENC squarely in the core)

The Weather Risk video you transcribed (and honestly, he read this correctly)

2. The 500-mb pattern explains why Midlothian is struggling

Your last two panels (GEFS & EPS 500 mb heights/anomalies) are the smoking gun.

What we see:

A deep, vertically stacked closed low centered offshore

Strong negative height anomalies hugging the coast

A massive, locked-in Arctic high over the interior US

This matters because:

The upper low is not phasing over NC/VA

It pivots east, not north

Lift rotates around the offshore low instead of swinging inland

That means:

The deformation band (the real snow producer) is rotating around the coast, not expanding inland.

If that 500-mb low were 100–150 miles farther west, Richmond would be buried.

But it’s not. And the ensembles agree on that placement.

3. Precipitation fields: the inland cutoff is real

Look at your GEFS / GEPS accumulated precip panels:

Coastal plain: deep blues and greens (solid QPF)

I-95 corridor: sharp gradient

West of Richmond: rapidly falling totals

This is exactly the pattern where:

Coastal NC / Tidewater VA get crushed

Central VA sits near the western edge of the shield

Snowfall becomes rate-dependent and band-dependent

And that’s why your point forecast:

Mentions snow → mix → freezing rain

Never commits to high totals

Keeps PoPs high but totals modest

PoP answers “will something fall?”

Totals answer “will you be happy?”

Right now, the models say: yes to the first, shrug to the second.

4. Why Dinwiddie looked better than Midlothian (and why that hurts)

This part stings, but it’s important.

Dinwiddie:

Slightly farther south

Slightly closer to coastal moisture

Slightly colder profile longer

Midlothian:

Just north enough to flirt with dry slotting

Just inland enough to lose snow rates

Just close enough to the warm nose aloft to complicate p-type

That’s why your corrected forecast dropped from:

“plausible accumulation” → “1–3 inches possible” → “mixed bag”

You didn’t imagine it.

You crossed a real mesoscale boundary.

5. So… is Midlothian “lucky to get any snow”?

No — but you are on the wrong side of the ceiling.

Here’s the honest probability envelope right now:

≥0.5" snow: likely

1–3": plausible (especially Friday night / early Saturday)

4–6": requires a westward jog or stronger banding

6+": needs a fundamentally different storm (not supported by ensembles)

The key thing:

Nothing in these images shows a trend toward Midlothian improving.

The ensembles are stable, not chaotic.

Stability this far out is bad news for last-minute miracles.

6. Why snow lovers hate Miller C storms

This is the philosophical gut-punch.

Miller C storms:

Are meteorologically impressive

Produce insane winds and coastal snow

Look incredible on satellite

Punish inland gradient zones

They reward:

OBX

Tidewater

Eastern NC

They tease:

Richmond

Central VA

The Piedmont edge

You’re living that truth in real time.

Bottom line (said gently, but honestly)

You are not getting skunked.

You are also not getting a classic Richmond snowstorm.

What you are getting is:

A legit winter event

Cold enough for snow at times

Enough moisture for accumulation

But not enough overlap of lift + moisture + cold for a blockbuster

Please don’t post this anymore 

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

7 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

Not sure why they didn't use my pic on the bus

OK, I know this is banter (but who cares in this thread since the "event" is all but gone)...but as a hobbyist/amateur photographer I particularly like the lighting in that shot.

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Yeah I was wondering about that...looking at the ENSO threat there did seem to be some warming on that side (don't fully understand what I'm looking at, though, lol East based we are screwed and may as well not botber. And that would absolutely suck because we wasted the last niño we had, smh I hope we can find a way to get a KU somehow this year...because if not we could be waiting longer (what comes after a strong nino but...two more ninas right? )

That’s not totally true.  We’ve got lucky in east based before with one big hit. But an east based Nino with an unfavorable solar/QBO would likely not be a wall to wall good winter like 2003 or 2010 and probably not even one that was mixed but features a very good 4-5 weeks like 1987 and 2015. But there is always the threat of one BIG hit even in a bad Nino because a juiced up STJ is sending waves at us and we just need to time cold up with one. 

[schinz]

I think I am going to be heading to our beach house 1/2 block from the ocean on the barrier island of Brigantine, NJ., just adjacent to Atlantic City.  Full moon Sunday, along with strong onshore winds backing up the bays spells moderate tidal flooding not to mention the chance of heavy snow!!

[RevWarReenactor]

Whats making this thing suddenly go west? If we can get more of that, we might bring this one back. Its only got to move like 200 miles. Its only Wednesday. That might be doable?

[AmericanWxFreak]

And who are these people posting this crap?  

Could be AI….

[psuhoffman]

Just now, AmericanWxFreak said:

Could be AI….

Let’s ask AI how to deal with it 

[stormtracker]

7 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

OK, I know this is banter (but who cares in this thread since the "event" is all but gone)...but as a hobbyist/amateur photographer I particularly like the lighting in that shot.

Yeah, the low lighting really accentuates my features.

[coastal front]

3 minutes ago, schinz said:

I think I am going to be heading to our beach house 1/2 block from the ocean on the barrier island of Brigantine, NJ., just adjacent to Atlantic City.  Full moon Sunday, along with strong onshore winds backing up the bays spells moderate tidal flooding not to mention the chance of heavy snow!!

I’m on the Jersey shore just inland from ocean city but usually prefer your sub forum lol. Both my parents live in brigantine hopefully we can get some scraps! 

[Ralph Wiggum]

Y'all will remember this post when this storm goes Jan 25, 2000 over the next 3 days. K, I'll just see my way out now

[mappy]

1 minute ago, stormtracker said:

Yeah, the low lighting really accentuates my features.

And makes you look like you could be 5’9 

[stormtracker]

Just now, mappy said:

And makes you look like you could be 5’9 

Calm down, Maryland Line.

[mappy]

Just now, stormtracker said:

Calm down, Maryland Line.

[Jebman]

Guys/gals. There is a Banter thread.

[clskinsfan]

1 minute ago, Jebman said:

Guys/gals. There is a Banter thread.

Yeah. Apparently we are in it. 

[Ephesians2]

Stolen from the Southeast Forum: