PNW February 2023 Weather Discussion - Meteorological winter finale

[Perturbed Member]

Hopefully the 00z GEM looks like the 00z RGEM. We will know shortly. 

[justpassinthru]

Certainly no "calm before the storm" on this forum, guess that's why I find myself pouring through every post "when there is a shift in the wind". 

One comment that hasn't been made but should be especially with the questioning of why the "paid" local weather tv pundits drag their feet when it comes to letting the words "it's going to snow" part from their lips. I remember a few years ago becoming aware of a change in their "predictive" behavior. TV Snow predictions before this change were much more forthcoming. But as our society has evolved (hmm),  when these tv weather experts predicted snow or at least inclement weather and if it didn't happen, they were proverbially crucified. 

I saw the shift in their weather reporting to a much more conservative stance. And this subdued reporting continues today.

Bummer as the "old" society would allow an occasional weather crystal ball mistake, but with the over the top liabilities of a school system daring to have their doors open when flakes might fall, pitted against the lost daily revenue for a student not at their desk on a given day, the weatherman took the fall for "doing their job". And the excitement of the buildup for a weather event over a period of days rather than hours in advance, broadcast on the 5:00 news, became a bygone of "better days."

So the "weather forum" has nicely filled the void. 

"Bring on the storm"...or not, either way, "it's a hell of a ride"

[TacomaWx]

4 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

00Z GFS

I hope we get 0.2” atleast lol. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

4 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

00Z GFS

Looks like 10-12” here, even 6-8” for east valley towns like Scio, Stayton, Silverton, and Molalla. 

[Doinko]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Looks like 10-12” here, even 6-8” for east valley towns like Scio, Stayton, Silverton, and Molalla. 

West Portland Metro does great too

[Perturbed Member]

Boom. 00z GEM vs 12z GEM. GEM is onboard finally. 

[Doinko]

4 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Hopefully the 00z GEM looks like the 00z RGEM. We will know shortly. 

Looks way better than the 12z. Low is stronger and farther north

[SpaceRace22]

7 minutes ago, justpassinthru said:

Certainly no "calm before the storm" on this forum, guess that's why I find myself pouring through every post "when there is a shift in the wind". 

One comment that hasn't been made but should be especially with the questioning of why the "paid" local weather tv pundits drag their feet when it comes to letting the words "it's going to snow" part from their lips. I remember a few years ago becoming aware of a change in their "predictive" behavior. TV Snow predictions before this change were much more forthcoming. But as our society has evolved (hmm),  when these tv weather experts predicted snow or at least inclement weather and if it didn't happen, they were proverbially crucified. 

I saw the shift in their weather reporting to a much more conservative stance. And this subdued reporting continues today.

Bummer as the "old" society would allow an occasional weather crystal ball mistake, but with the over the top liabilities of a school system daring to have their doors open when flakes might fall, pitted against the lost daily revenue for a student not at their desk on a given day, the weatherman took the fall for "doing their job". And the excitement of the buildup for a weather event over a period of days rather than hours in advance, broadcast on the 5:00 news, became a bygone of "better days."

So the "weather forum" has nicely filled the void. 

"Bring on the storm"...or not, either way, "it's a hell of a ride"

This is an excellent point and something that I think everyone needs to be a lot more sympathetic toward professional meteorologists for. I know so many people who have zero clue about weather forecasting, but they will very confidently tell you how dumb and unreliable "the weather man" is. It's seemingly "common knowledge" that weather forecasts suck, even though forecasts have become remarkable accurate in recent years.

Professional mets get basically no slack when it comes to overpredicting significant weather, because then on the occasions where the significant thing doesn't happen, all people have to talk about is how wrong the forecast was. When they underpredict, but then something crazy still happens, no one cares because they are too busy talking about the crazy weather instead of the overly conservative forecast that didn't call for it to happen.

[Frontal Snowsquall]

16 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Hopefully the 00z GEM looks like the 00z RGEM. We will know shortly. 

00z RGEM/RDPS looks great for PDX Metro.

[TT-SEA]

00Z GEM is obviously great for Portland... just waiting for WB maps to update.

[Weiner Warrior]

Looks to be some moisture sliding South through the sound with the artic air. Hoping we get a suprise with that.

[Perturbed Member]

00z GEM is dedicated to Timmy in Scappoose

[TT-SEA]

00Z GEM

[Doinko]

6 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Boom. 00z GEM vs 12z GEM. GEM is onboard finally. 

GRAF should come out soon too. Last few runs were great, hope it continues

[Timmy]

1 minute ago, Perturbed Member said:

00z GEM is dedicated to Timmy in Scappoose

Can’t wait

[Weiner Warrior]

Snooow

[MossMan]

12 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

I hope we get 0.2” atleast lol. 

Will be sad if my 1.25” of mostly surprise snow last week ends up being the big event. 

[Perturbed Member]

13 minutes ago, justpassinthru said:

Certainly no "calm before the storm" on this forum, guess that's why I find myself pouring through every post "when there is a shift in the wind". 

One comment that hasn't been made but should be especially with the questioning of why the "paid" local weather tv pundits drag their feet when it comes to letting the words "it's going to snow" part from their lips. I remember a few years ago becoming aware of a change in their "predictive" behavior. TV Snow predictions before this change were much more forthcoming. But as our society has evolved (hmm),  when these tv weather experts predicted snow or at least inclement weather and if it didn't happen, they were proverbially crucified. 

I saw the shift in their weather reporting to a much more conservative stance. And this subdued reporting continues today.

Bummer as the "old" society would allow an occasional weather crystal ball mistake, but with the over the top liabilities of a school system daring to have their doors open when flakes might fall, pitted against the lost daily revenue for a student not at their desk on a given day, the weatherman took the fall for "doing their job". And the excitement of the buildup for a weather event over a period of days rather than hours in advance, broadcast on the 5:00 news, became a bygone of "better days."

So the "weather forum" has nicely filled the void. 

"Bring on the storm"...or not, either way, "it's a hell of a ride"

Good post. 

Unfortunately we now have a system where being wrong is more bad than it is good to be right. We incentivize avoidance of being wrong above all else. There is no incentive left to take much of a risk or make a prediction even in the face of significant uncertainty. 

[BLI snowman]

5 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

00Z GEM

 

[TT-SEA]

Not much with the Sunday system... quick transition on this run.

[BLI snowman]

Angling for a slightly stronger low and somewhat weaker/slower dry air advection than modeled as we pull closer feels like a fortuitous place to be in. Nice that the Portland metro is largely falling into that camp right now as we head into the home stretch with this.

[Meatyorologist]

3 minutes ago, SpaceRace22 said:

This is an excellent point and something that I think everyone needs to be a lot more sympathetic toward professional meteorologists for. I know so many people who have zero clue about weather forecasting, but they will very confidently tell you how dumb and unreliable "the weather man" is. It's seemingly "common knowledge" that weather forecasts suck, even though forecasts have become remarkable accurate in recent years.

Professional mets get basically no slack when it comes to overpredicting significant weather, because then on the occasions where the significant thing doesn't happen, all people have to talk about is how wrong the forecast was. When they underpredict, but then something crazy still happens, no one cares because they are too busy talking about the crazy weather instead of the overly conservative forecast that didn't call for it to happen.

Our weather forecasts for snow, wind, and convective events are pretty trash. I do not blame the ribbing... Though most of it comes from a place of misunderstanding. The people most likely to get all vocal about how unreliable meteorologists are, are also the same people who are most naive of the science, methodology, and reasoning behind weather forecasting.

But when we can almost never predict snow events to an acceptable degree of accuracy, even just hours in advance, it severely undermines public trust. And to make matters worse, the best way to compensate for this deficiency is to give into this narrative, and completely and totally admit that we have no idea what is going to happen. Because even assuming we have the weather pattern and progression down to the tee, our forecasts are still *extremely* vulnerable. Local terrain features, convective surprises, minor QPF fluctuations, and minute differences in timing all have the potential completely derail our predictions.

[VancouverIslandSouth]

24 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

00Z GFS

Perhaps this won't be a non-event in Victoria after all. Either way, things look much better for East Vancouver Island, approaching a foot of snow in Shawnigan with that. The low is still shown a bit too far offshore for the Seattle - Bellingham area.

[Perturbed Member]

2 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

Angling for a slightly stronger low and somewhat weaker/slower dry air advection than modeled as we pull closer feels like a fortuitous place to be in. Nice that the Portland metro is largely falling into that camp right now as we head into the home stretch with this.

Yeah seems like a threading the needle situation. Fortunately we didn't peak too early, feels like this last second stronger and further north theme will workout well for PDX metro. Hopefully not a change that continues too much more of course...

[Meatyorologist]

This is a pretty satisfying progression. Our low in question is noice and vertically stacked.

[TT-SEA]

00Z GEM is much more interesting for Sunday...

[Doinko]

GRAF is out, looks great

 

[VancouverIslandSouth]

1 minute ago, TT-SEA said:

00Z GEM is much more interesting for Sunday...

Looks like it never switches over to rain before drying out between fronts. The rain comes in the deep trough behind it.

[Perturbed Member]

1 minute ago, Doinko said:

GRAF is out, looks great

 

Looks like about 0.30 in QPF with temps 32F or lower. Nice result. 

[TT-SEA]

Just now, VancouverIslandSouth said:

Looks like it never switches over to rain before drying out between fronts. The rain comes in the deep trough behind it.

And looks very similar to what the 12Z ECMWF showed.

[Perturbed Member]

The entire band falls as snow for basically everyone, looks very similar to a previous ECMWF run. Hopefully GFS jumps on board. 

[bainbridgekid]

WRF is better for King and Snohomish Counties. Most of this falls Tuesday night though. 

[Doinko]

4 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Looks like about 0.30 in QPF with temps 32F or lower. Nice result. 

Some decent east winds too

[snow_wizard]

Nice looking GFS run so far.  A bit more moisture for the Central Puget Sound Wednesday morning and the weekend snow is there.  Just one nice 500mb trough after another.

[Cold Snap]

3 hours ago, Phil said:

You want wind? We’ve had plenty to share.  This upcoming pattern will probably produce several 50-60+mph days over the next 2 weeks. 

 

Does the SE ridge forming have something to do with it? I’m in Alabama right now and it was pretty windy here all day though not as much as that video.

[Cold Snap]

3 hours ago, joelgombiner said:

Some quick mapping in QGIS shows what 44-mile resolution looks like. The image on the left shows the topography of western North America, overlayed with a 44x44 mile grid. The image on the right shows the same view, with down-sampled topography created by taking the median elevation value in each grid cell. This is close to what that the long-range GFS apparently sees. Note the total absence of the Olympics, and the overall crudeness of the topography. 

Due to interest in this, I went ahead and made a second version with 15 greyscale color classes to better depict the coarse 44-mile topography on the right. This makes it a bit harder for my eye to pick out the terrain patterns, but is more accurate for what the GFS actually sees. 

Another thought is that the placement of the grid relative to the topographic features makes a big difference for the final output. Are the Olympics centered in one grid-cell or split between four? 

Really cool how you went into depth with this! Thank you!

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, bainbridgekid said:

WRF is better for King and Snohomish Counties. Most of this falls Tuesday night though. 

Is there something wrong with Tuesday night snow?

[Phishy Wx]

winds really ramping up here now

[RentonHill]

It is really blowing here 

[RentonHill]

3 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Is there something wrong with Tuesday night snow?

Tuesday is the worst day of the week. T-t-t-t-two times tuesday hooah!!!