In recent posts I’ve used a football metaphor regarding the chance of a snowstorm saving our behinds for the Birkie. Since it’s 50 in Hayward, here comes a baseball metaphor:

It’s the bottom of the 9th, two out, runner on second, down a run. If we get a double or better (6″ or more) from the storm, the race will be great. A single (3-5″) may be fine, depending on how much base is left, but the runner could get thrown out at the plate. Any kind of out? We’re probably sunk.

Right now, we’re hitting about .500. The most recent models, to go back to football, have been shading towards a miss wide-right, putting snow down in Madison and Chicago but not on the Birkie Trail. But last night the models were missing wide-left, with rain on the Birkie Trail and snow up in the Arrowhead. The weather in Hayward today was warm but dry: so the base probably did okay. But there’s a lot of weather to come.

Some people have emailed me asking about weather models and where I get them, so here you go. For the GFS and CMC, poke around TropicalTidbits and PivotalWeather; you can also view model output at wxweb and the Bufkit Warehouse. The ECMWF is proprietary and you have to pay to access it, and we don’t have enough money for that yet (support our advertisers!) but you can view output from the Norwegian Meteorological Service (long story as to why, and as to why I know) here.