Sun just blasted an earth directed x flare. Aurora time.

Yeah, unfortunately the likelihood of another deep airmass building like that this winter in one of our main source regions (Yukon) was always relatively low. That -PNA pattern in late December definitely had some of the macro ingredients to be good but the details worked out as poorly as possible.

That is one silver lining of this tbh. We really confirmed what the new superior model is for anything in the mid and long range. This entire dud of a season, the AIFS has been completely adamant that nothing even remotely cold or snowy would happen. There have been multiple occasions this season where literally every single other model was hinting at cold in the long range, while the AIFS was completely on its own with the nothingburger solution. And guess which model was right every single time? It's also worth noting that the AIFS led the way with our cold shot in February 2025 (that's where my alt Number1AIFSfan came from), so I don't think its accuracy is just a case of it always going for less cold, which due to statistics ends up being right more often than not. I think it's safe to say we have a new king tbh

Wow the Euro is cold! The AI models were better in the northeast this weekend, but the original models were better with the December storm there. Flip a coin. That said. I’d gladly take 1-2 inchesof powder in the cold dead of winter.

I agree with your overall point but 2003-04 was actually the 2nd snowiest winter of the 21st century so far in parts of the Portland metro, after 2008-09.