It's basically a fool's errand hoping a storm comes back from the west. Coming back from suppressed or OTS is almost always doable, but as I said from the get-go, without a strong, west-based -NAO to keep the 50/50 from scooting out, you need perfect timing.
This wave has gotten stronger and slowed down. With is no good NAO in place, the northern stream progresses and we're left with the upcoming debacle.
I still have difficulty believing that the low is going to track through Raleigh, but we're going to change to rain here almost certainly, the way it looks at this point, hopefully in time to avoid the major icing that areas to the west will see.
Unless the models are missing something really significant here, we know pretty much what we've got now.
One more thing, this is a good illustration into ensemble value. When you have one or two outlier runs of an operational, and the ensembles remain steadfast, you should give a nod to the ensembles. But when you see run after run of a certain trend, and the ensembles are slowly following, and other model trends are in the same direction, it is usually inaccurate to say "ignore the ops; let's go with the ensembles".
The ensembles provide a great deal of value, but we have to use them correctly and situationally. We can't use them for wishcasting or as evidence of what we hope will come true.
It has been clear since pretty much the beginning that the ensembles suites have been following the operational models. Givin the lack of a mechanism to hold the 50/50 in place, this was somewhat predictable. Trends across all guidance are just as, if not more, important to forecasting as the specific solutions themselves.
We will see some oscillations yet. But unless something big is being missed, we are starting to get a really good idea how this one will play out.
