Id like to clarify something, and anyone who can translate english to arabic that would be helpful .... A prolonged period of light precipitation will not yield remarkable accumulation of snow, especially where we live
For example, although i don't like it, the current GFS run displays a prolonged period of very light "on and off" precipitation in the form of light snow showers between sunday and tuesday for elevations exceeding 800 meters.... and ive noticed many forum members, as they usually do, trying to redefine the information in the most positive way possible, saying that precipitation is precipitation and a long period of an average of 1-5 mm per 6 hours will add up to surmountable accumulations
Given the fact that temperatures will hover around 0 celcius.... the accumulations would be, at best, negligible, meaning very minor and unnoticeable, due to transient heating and unimpressive accumulation versus melting ratios
Back in the US the term "accumulating snow" versus "snowfall" was one that always came up, because it makes a big difference
Accumulating snow, especially for our area, requires constant bombardment from the ocean in the form of Sea-effect snow... usually at the beginning of the front an organized wave of non-sea effect dependent precipitation hits with the initial 10-15 cm of accumulation... but the bulk of the "accumulating snow" is encountered from "convective" cells that drop 2-3 cm of snow per hour, sometimes more
SO according to this model run, the GFS paints a picture of not much more accumulation than that of what we had on new years... even though the maps look a lot nicer now
That being said
The current GFS model is most likely wrong, based on what ive seen collectively from the other models, we are dealing with a classic "Post initial expectation spin from the main polar block" which occurred before the January 7-10, 2013 snow, when we were all expecting the initial hit to be the main event, only for that to skim to the north and have a colder plunge wrap around a properly placed polar block over turkey... The ECMWF has been hinting at it for a while, and the GEM (although this model really sucks and i hate how everyone jumps for joy when it shows what people want to see after ignoring it all week when it looked "bad" ) is showing a similar spin around
I still stand by my standard that it is nearly impossible to avoid a major snow event under conditions such as these, so pending a couple more ECMWF updates, its safe to say the 25 until the 28th seems like the best bet for the real meat of the "storm" even though technically it would be an entirely different one... we are the only ones who actually notice that ;) ..... stay hopeful guys, but also stay real
--Examples of expected initial hits which later turned out to fail and be followed by polar block spin arounds
January 7-10, 2013
January 7-10, 2015 (The initial hit was less impressive than anticipated all week, but a surprising burst of warm and humid currents provided an end of the storm surprise
Feb 18, 2015-- One could argue that a week ahead of that we had a very disappointing miss to the west ... and the polar block that sunk towards us took longer but the theory is the same
Alexa-- Alexa was actually preceded by a high level of model disagreement, and just 120 hours ahead the GFS showed too much cut off to the north and the low "slipped" far to the west and missed us... according to the model
furthermore, Friday night was virtually unexpected (December 13-14) as the second round was absent from most models until the snowflakes were already flying with round one.... the ECMWF, however, predicted this very well
Sorry for the English, i wish my Arabic was strong enough for all to understand, but i would end up sounding like a 5 year old so if anyone can help out with translation, that would be great :) haha
Thanks guys
رد: ::: مناقشة الأحوال الجوية السائدة والمتوقعة في شهر كانون ثاني / يناير 2016::
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