snow_wizard

The neat thing about when I live where it snows a lot is I will be able to come on here and look at this area with much less emotion. It should help me do some good forecasting for this area. At this point I am just fried and not even close to the top of my game. The setup being shown on the ECMWF is a lot like what happened in NW Oregon earlier in the month but shifted northward 200 miles or so. Still a chance it could drop 50 miles further south and nail Seattle pretty good. Even the Euro can be off by that small amount at this time range. Really no reason to expect this to go our way, but the chance is there.

I think you probably helped him to see very clearly with this post.

Since I would have to buy the tickets in advance to get a good deal, I need somewhere that it's almost certain to be cold with snow on the ground at pretty much any time during an average winter.

Quite frankly I just don't care about the rest of this winter any more. Just want it to be over.

This climate can kiss my a$$!

I've already told my wife I'm going to Fairbanks for a week next winter. I'm going to walk around outside until I'm a human popsicle and have gotten my fill of cold and snow for once. It's not like getting it at home, but with an El Nino next winter we're not going to get much here. At least we won't have to go through the pain of a million near misses. Just being able to go into a winter knowing we are screwed will be easier.

Nice to see that some places are still capable of getting a great old fashioned winter.

I'm totally ready for spring. Watching everywhere else get pounded has pretty much stripped my soul away this winter. It's pretty ironic...I spend the summer and fall looking forward to winter and then by mid February I am so ready for the torture to be over. Right now I want to fast forward to May and be done with the steaming pile of crap weather that usually highlights March and April. I would move tomorrow if a couple hundred thousand dollars fell from the sky and I was able to. I am 100% sick of this place.

You stated this just about as clearly as possible. So very true.

Yeah...I'm so ready to move. My energy is drained.

It appears the GEM is a little bit better at hour 72, but it's taking forever to update beyond that. All in all that model has apparently done the best with this. It never had any great runs like the GFS and ECMWF did. On another note a huge MJO wave is finally emerging and will apparently be getting into octants 1 and 2 by the middle of March. That should finally put an end to the pattern that has dominated the past several weeks. I'm ready for a more traditional pattern to emerge. Just way too much disappointment to have enjoyed most of this winter.

I'm still holding out a little bit of hope.

It's not even really that now. The 500mb pattern never gets that great either. Too much energy remains north of the border. Kind of like a mild redux of Jan 2005.

Normally I would agree with his statement based on the 12z ECMWF suite of models. The fact the NAM and GFS are both terrible on this run really concerns me. What looked like a possible epic March blast a few days ago looks like we may struggle to get below freezing now. Overall I'm pretty disgusted with how this winter worked out for the Puget Sound area. Pretty much every place in the northern half of the country had more snow than us this winter, including many locations in the Western lowlands of the NW. My frustration meter is at a perfect 10 right now. I've only had one freezing low temperature since the Arctic blast early this month.

I'm getting worried in spite of the 12z GFS and ECMWF ensemble runs being so insistent the operational GFS is too warm. Of course the GFS will be right this time because it shows an unfavorable outcome for us.

Apparently you missed my meltdown earlier. If the GFS was the best model at this point I wouldn't have much hope. As it is the GFS and ECMWF ensemble both look pretty decent. They look much better at the 500mb level than the operational GFS as well as at the 850mb level.

As I said the ECMWF ensemble was the best of all on the 12z run. We'll see how it goes.

Another very noteworthy thing about the ECMWF ensemble is it indicates -16C 850mb temps along the east slopes of the Cascades. The outflow winds are sure to be very cold if that verifies. With that cold of air I am bit concerned we may get freezing rain when the layer of cold air gets shallower early next week. Pretty weird to see that kind of situation in March.

It is pretty odd when it's by far the warmest member of all though. When looking at the ECMWF ensemble it seems almost certain the GFS will trend colder in the home stretch. The GFS seems to have really fallen on hard times over the past week.

I'm pretty heartened by the fact the ECMWF ensemble looks about the best of any mode for lowland snow prospects and it is considered the best model. It and the GFS ensemble really like the idea of sending the cold air out over a short water trajectory and then swinging the jet into SW WA. Just about as good as it gets for trajectory in a case like this. I am very puzzled why about 90% of the GFS ensemble members are much better for us at the 500mb level than the operational GFS. You could argue that terrain may cause problems for 850mb ensemble projections, but the 500mb level isn't effected by terrain to any great extent. At this point let's hope the GFS is running too warm to make up for running too cold on the last event. Right now it does seem to be the warm outlier.

If the air mass ends up being just a tad colder than the ECMWF is showing we could be looking at something pretty epic. As it is what is shown would be decent, but the chance is there for huge with some minor tweaks. I'm not sure I buy the extreme differences of 850s between the east slopes of the Cascades and the Puget Sound lowlands. I've never seen it that tight with a developing cold wave before.

Looking at the close up ECMWF precip and surface pressure maps shows a very exciting scenario where the northern 2/3 of WA could score some big snows in the 4 to 7 day period. Very close to what happened in NW Oregon in early Feb and Bellingham a couple of days ago.

The ECMWF is offering a pretty different scenario. The undercutting westerlies kick in well before it happens on the GFS. At this point a blend of the GFS and ECMWF would be very sweet indeed. Going to be interesting to watch.

It's quite good. Not sure why it's quiet.

This run shows a massive snowstorm for much of Western WA Monday night. 1000-850mb thickness is still easily cold enough for snow even Tuesday morning in Seattle.