Chris's Corner - Active March into March

At this point, let's cut our losses and get to spring. We have baseball tournaments coming up, and I just know that we are going to freeze our you know whats off.

I agree, I think this offense will be powerful. However, I expect Noot to be relegated to a bench/rotating outfield player by the All-star Break to be honest. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm just not seeing what a lot of others seem to be with him.

Our downfall potential is high with the starting rotation. Waino's velocity is down so far, and that continues a trend from the latter part of last year. Father time has caught up to that arm. Mikolas should be a stable force. Who the hell knows with Jack. And the others are inconsistent and can't stay healthy. Monty is a hugely important pitcher this year. I see them seeking some help via trade mid-year.

All that being said, it should be a fun team to watch, I just hope the arms can hold out. Should have held on to Quintana.

Nootbaar already has Ohtani “cracking the pepper” in Japan

Kid is a winner

Baseball talk has commenced……winter must be over 😂

Models are starting to show another high impact, long duration atmospheric River event for California.

Snow levels look to be much higher than the last events. Could spell major trouble.

That wouldn’t work. Rich Hill shows about the point of diminishing returns on curves as a % of total pitches.

You need something to make the pitch more deceptive and to keep the batter guessing. He has the tight curve in the dirt with 2 strikes and the loopy one he can steal a strike on. His spin rate on the curve is very good still which means he has a chance to survive the year.

He needs to throw 88-89mph with the fastball with great location to catch batters sitting on the curve.

Wainwright would “freeze” a lot of batters the last 2 years with that fastball/cutter right on the corner.

Rivera had a hard cutter and was a unicorn.

😂😂 good one…….

I was walking with a friend this morning at 370 Lake Park here in St. Pete. There were quite a few of those pesky gnats/noseeums/whatevers. Way too early to be "bugged' by them but we were.

Snowfall in Chicago is a hyper localized impact though, no?

Let’s put it in baseball terms.

Before the SSW it was like the Central US had Paul Dejong up to bat.

Then the SSW came and we put Paul Goldschmidt in as a pinch hitter.

Our odds of getting a hit went way up, but certainly there was no guarantee of success.

I’ll add that the gfs and ggem are far from warm and there is a potential storm this weekend.

You missed the entire point. I know you don’t care about Chicago.

My point is you are misstating and/or misinterpreting the correlation between snow/cold and SSW.

You are either being purposely intellectually dishonest or obtuse.

It is not a point forecast tool. It is that simple.

I think you can definitely tie it together. There was clear stratospheric to trophospheric coupling that aligns well with the timing of the potential winter storm. This is extremely visible on the GEFS Polar Cap Height chart which shows the classic “drip” beginning on March 5th and continuing through the 14th.

There were clear trends with an AO trending down over the last week or so.

Over a 30-year average it is not unusual for it to snow in the Upper Midwest in March. However, this winter has not been average so that might not be the best way to compare.

Would we be torching if the SSW didn’t happen? Potentially.

Also, correlation is not causation and correlation is relative.

It’s just frustrating when people try to take pot shots when the SSW is a valuable tool in the tool belt.

Probabilities and distributions have nuance. Some on here twist those into absolutes when nobody else was presenting them that way.

There’s no pot shots, I was just pointing out facts, I was never the one talking over and over about how the pattern would change and turn “cold and snowy “ I’ve said it many times, most of these SSWs do not have a big effect on our weather, yes at times they do but it’s more rare than happening.

At this point, interest should be turning toward the potential for late cool season freezes, especially with the trees budding and perennials already coming up. But no matter what we end up fine. I've exchanged messages with mets who are falling back on the "we never said there'd extreme cold, and we never said there'd be snow in this part of the country"...but I don't even know at this point if last week's 2 week forecast of below normal temps and above normal precip would even verify. Let's hope it doesn't. The most miserable but common St. Louis winter feature is prolonged rains with temps in the 30s and 40s. I don't think any of us like that, but mother nature said, "oh, you think cold and rain is bad, hold my beer, I will add winds". Today may have been absolutely gorgious but I was inside not feeling well, so I have no idea.