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Pattern January 2021 - Joyless January

Brick Tamland said:
But if they didn't produce snow in the past then why would they be great patterns?


It doesn't have to be a historic storm. Just ssying if a pattern is called great for producing snow around here then it should be one that we have seen in the past that more times than not did produce. I don't think it would be a pattern that was called great if that wasn't the case.
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It's considered great because it's a remembered or composited pattern that produced snow here and they generally share common traits. What isn't remembered or compiled is how many times historically we had similar patterns that didn't work. That leads to a misconseption that these patterns always produce and if they don't we don't know what works anymore.

We live in a location that might on average have a general less than 10% chance of seeing snow on any winter day. If you have patterns that increase those odds to 33-50-70 I would consider that great but there's still a fail percentage. It's like having your best free throw shooter who hits 80% at the line in an end of game situation. History says there's a good chance they make it but statistically they may miss.
 
Updated the final map for NC from the storm that hit us a few days ago. Thanks to SD, I added a dusting contour to far SW Wake and Chatham-Harnett County line. Also added a dusting contour from Greenville to just outside Elizabeth City as radar strongly supported some accumulating snow there as banding sat over these places for several hours (not unlike Yanceyville in the northern Piedmont. I also heard some rumblings of there being 2” on the ground this morning in Plymouth, NC. If anyone has ground truth or knows anyone in that area to see if they saw anything I’d love to hear about it.

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SD said:
It's considered great because it's a remembered or composited pattern that produced snow here and they generally share common traits. What isn't remembered or compiled is how many times historically we had similar patterns that didn't work. That leads to a misconseption that these patterns always produce and if they don't we don't know what works anymore.

We live in a location that might on average have a general less than 10% chance of seeing snow on any winter day. If you have patterns that increase those odds to 33-50-70 I would consider that great but there's still a fail percentage. It's like having your best free throw shooter who hits 80% at the line in an end of game situation. History says there's a good chance they make it but statically they may miss.
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Exactly. Even patterns where we have completely run the table on every single teleconnection still only produce a legit accumulating snow ~40% of the time around here. This pattern obviously isn’t that favorable so historically odds still are at best 1 in 3 if not 1 in 4 for snow here ~Jan 20, but that’s infinitely better than climo where we get probably 2 storms a winter
 
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