MAG5035

Reporting thundersnow here. Very robust squalls with heavy snow and strong winds.

We'll have to watch the kicker system(s) behind the major Great Lakes storm progged to rip up through the lakes region on Monday, possibly in the next Wed/Thurs timeframe. This weather pattern shaping up on the models for the mid-month timeframe is exactly as I feared for about the whole last half of winter.. certainly not too little but definitely too late. We finally have the amp to the pattern with a well placed and very strong western US/Eastern Pac ridge with the highly anomalous eastern trough to go with it. It looks like it would probably be an anomalous enough pattern for mischief in the snowy form with a well placed/phased system. Models today around D6-7ish have what looks like maybe a northern branch wave digging behind a departing coastal that runs a wave of precip through. That'd probably be enough for flakes at least back this way and especially in the mountains, but probably tough to accumulate with a lighter event being progged. The temps/thicknesses aloft are certainly going to be there for any system but surface temps at the lower elevations with the strong sun will always be an issue this time of the year without an incredibly cold airmass or an intense storm system. It becomes extremely hard to get a widespread PA snowfall after maybe the first week of April. Light snow events in early-mid April aren't too out of the ordinary in the higher Laurel's locations, or even here (i've already seen mangled flakes today). But the April 7,1982 event is about the latest one I can think of for the LSV region, and we're getting past mid-month with this potential pattern later next week. The most extreme historical example is the April 28, 1928 snowstorm in central/western PA i've brought up a few times in the past.. that dumped 1-2 feet in this area and more in the southern Laurels. I remember a powerful nor'easter in mid April 2007 had model projections in the 3-5 day range with excessive snows but ultimately ended up only snowing in the high ground of the Apps. You have to pretty much have the stars align for a bigger event this time of the year. But even without any additional snow events, it looks quite cold and unsettled.. maybe not April 2018 cold but pretty chilly.

The magnolia tree started blooming this week and is in full bloom today, roughly 10-12 days earlier than last year. Also did the first full grass cut as well. Guess we’re getting late spring out of the way when it reverts to March later this month. from yesterday:

About the only positive to this situation is the environmental impact from all the measures in place having a large portion of the world economy on pause and everyone staying home and doing very little driving. If there was ever an ideal time to study, compare, and observe just how much we impact the environment pollution wise.. it's right now. For example, India is one of the worst countries in the world for air pollution, and now in the middle of their 21-day shutdown the Himalayas are visible from 100 miles away in some portions of the country which hasn't happened in decades. https://weather.com/health/coronavirus/video/himalayas-visible-for-first-time-in-30-years-due-to-lockdown https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/audio/himalayas-visible-for-first-time-in-30-years-as-pollution-levels-in-india-drop

One thing I've wondered about with the daily reports from the state on new cases is just how lagged the test results are.. like are some of the postive results reported for a certain day from a test that was given several days ago or even a week or so? As much as this has spread in some parts of the state to this point... the stay at home/social distancing measures have to be making some kind of a difference that could start showing up in the data soon. But yea, that's going to be a challenge when it comes time to figure out how to restart stuff and not make for another outbreak before we're really equipped to deal with it. I could see certain sectors of the workforce restarting fairly quickly after things stabilize but when it comes to the retail/entertainment/travel related things...ugh. Part of my schooling in addition to my met degree is a minor and also graduate certification in GIS. I know they're trying to get a serious message across, but naturally the cartographer/analyst in me wishes that the health.pa.gov map had a different representation/classification method of the color scheme to the number of cases. Centre County reported 4 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total in that county to 43. Apparently 43 cases was enough to turn the county red on the map (the highest category). So basically Centre at 43 is lumped into the same category as Philadelphia County with 3135 cases. Other than a lot of counties painted red, that big of a range is not really telling me much statistically. 3135 known cases spread over Philadelphia County's 2019 population (est) of 1,584,064 people comes out to 0.2% or about 1 in 505. 43 known cases spread over Centre's 2019 population(est) of 162,385 is about 0.026%... or 1 in 3776. That's a significant difference. It shows that despite Philadelphia County's much larger population, the virus is notably more prevalent there statistically. If your wondering about Lancaster County, it's 0.07% or about 1 in 1471. That's the kind of statistic you want mapped out if you really want a somewhat better picture of the hot spots of this virus at the county level. Obviously, viewing the virus statistics at the city/municipality level would be much more telling but that's not publicly available right now. Lastly, this data only becomes more accurate with testing as many people as you can.. which should have been more of a priority early on in the initial hot spots of where the virus started showing up here in this country, and even now for that matter. Software modeling the potential spread/impact of this virus is only as good as the data being put into it, much like weather modeling in that regard. Might as well just lock that right in, I put my snowblower back in the storage shed on Saturday, haha.

We've been generally lucky in this section of the state so far. Blair only had 4 cases reported as of today and we do have a testing site in Altoona. Centre's the county in this region with the most (32) and all things considered that's probably doing okay as well. PSU's spring break was Mar 8-14 and when they suspended in person classes in the middle of that week they pretty much haven't allowed any on-campus students to come back. I'm certainly hopeful those actions may have mitigated what could've been a much bigger outbreak considering 30-35k students with a sizeable number of international students as well as I'm sure, a pretty decent amount that hail from the tri-state area.

Yup lol, that just shows how much of a one hit wonder the Jan 2016 blizzard was for that winter and how it divided our area and left some of us nearly high and dry. H-burg would've had a 9-10" season without it.

They probably just should have instituted the statewide order right off the bat like most other states have been doing. The last couple days some counties were asking the state to include themselves into the order, like Somerset and Cameron.. where Somerset had a few cases and Cameron only had 1. It seems like a lot of people don't get past the titles of the articles and assume that stay at home means everything will shut down, so there will probably be another run at the store. I think the official "stay at home" could give authorities the ability to enforce the order at least from an informing standpoint, such as pulling someone over to see where they're going and such. But don't believe this state is actually enforcing by actual fines or anything like that right now. Neighboring states like MD and DC are threatening violators of their stay at home orders with a misdemeanor and up to a year in jail (DC no more than 90 days) and a $5000 fine. I see the FL governor finally issued a statewide order today. A little late for that week of so the spring break revelers were on the beaches.

Visible satellite imagery (https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/?parms=regional-northeast-dcphase-96-1-100-1&checked=map&colorbar=undefined) shows very clearly the low cloud deck still anchored in over eastern PA this afternoon even after clearing in the mid-high levels. You can see a little bit of erosion of the low clouds from the west and south but we're only a couple hours from sunset and the east probably isn't clearing out by then. The sun did bust out here mid-afternoon and we're in the 60s, but we don't have the high winds that are occurring in the Laurel's and especially west of there in PBZ's zones. The full mixing there is getting temps way into the 70s, even JST is 72 currently.

Well for this week in "it figures", hey we have blocking up top! Unfortunately, probably too much so in the case of this potential April 1st event. -PNA western trough and positive tilt alignment also help keep the system suppressed and not really allow for it to amp and try to come up. Even if it does throw up precip, the temps are likely to be really marginal as per usual this time of the year absent a significantly anomalous cold airmass.

Quite likely to be some flooding issues around here this evening with this last batch of heavy rain/thunderstorms moving in.

Tornado warning just issued coming into western PA from Ohio, portions of northern Washington and western Allegheny Counties. You SW PA folks got quite the severe setup, at least on paper (Mesoanalysis). Surface CAPEs over 1500 and Mixed Layer capes near 1000 coupled with modest helicity and pretty good shear/lift are putting out EHI values and lighting up the tornado parameter products. I'd be very watchful of that line of storms as it presses into SW PA and also some potential discrete storms esp south of the city. Of more immediate attention, the hook echo portion of the tornado warned storm looks to be taking aim at the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh eventually (Bethel Park, Mount Lebanon, etc). The north side of this cell likely has significant hail in it as well. Velocity isn't showing a concise couplet but the pronounced hook echo is definitely indicating rotation in this storm.

This next batch of torrential downpours is here. The elevated instability is definitely present as there's been several cloud to ground strikes.

Maybe we'll have actual winter weather and snow chances in December for a change if some of these rumblings about an eventual Nina come to fruition. Most CPC guidance is pointed generally neutral but the CFS v2 has been solidly in nina territory later this year. Just a little bit of time to hone that one in haha.

Can’t relate on the underachieving rainfall. Just got crushed with a torrential downpour with some thunder. Lots of standing water in the yard and one of the underground drains at the bottom of the yard was erupting like a geyser. First time I’ve seen that since I moved here a few years ago. It must have been fairly rainy earlier this morning. @canderson I hope your family member is doing better.

QPF aside, the two systems would have been likely examples of systems we would have all scored from had this occurred in the dead of winter. The pattern setup is just enough to finally run a couple systems under us but we need significant anomalous cold (compared to March climo) to go with that this time of the year which we don't have.

So this is happening about 10 miles from here... and probably at the top of the mountain 4 miles from here as well. It's raining here. Might see stuff like this further up in central and north central at similar elevations.

Have had some precip falling for a little while, looks to be mostly or all rain.

I don't think this storm is necessarily a loss track-wise, the main issue is what I mentioned the other day about precip intensity vs very marginal temperatures. Although, I suppose a bump NW with this initial shield of WAA precip doesn't help with the earlier portion of this event where the best chance for initial snowfall is.. esp central and SE. It's chilly and quite dry in front of this system, like last week. The snow potential on the lead up this week was certainly viable.. If we had a solid slug of moderate to heavy precip targeting the region late tonight into tomorrow morning, most of us would likely be receiving an accumulating wet snowfall. The problem is a separation from the initial precip which seems destined more toward the north central and the blossoming precip associated with the developing coastal low. Timing of the latter is later tomorrow, when the strong high (which doesn't have extremely cold air to be tapped anyways) is off to the east and the delay in the onset of more decent precip allows for daytime warming of the already highly marginal low level temps. Thus, we still have a viable snow threat in the north central region (esp at higher elevations) where this initial wave of precip will impact the most and where it will remain just barely cold enough as the coastal takes over. Unfortunately for the central and Sus Valley, whatever potential flakes may be seen is going to be dependent on if we can develop a band of WAA precip. Early looks at the HRRR haven't been too enthused about that. The radar looks okay (much better for the north central eventually) but one has to be mindful of the dry air in place. Just another case of close but not enough... fundamentally the same problems are still there. I still think the continued +AO coupled with the quietly persistent -PNA is outdoing what the recently turned negative EPO regime could have done for our region without that counterbalance. The AO is at nearly +5 right now, and the pattern alignment over the CONUS favoring eastern ridging at 500mb won't allow for this system to really amp. The EPO may have helped enough to finally get something under us, but we're not cold enough...and we're way late in the season to rely on marginal. The system later this week may well take about the same track as tomorrow's system, but it doesn't appear that it will have enough cold to work with outside of the higher north central.

Models and ensembles are still generally supportive of this snow threat on Monday, which I think could be in the cards for most in here. The Euro still leads the way but has edged down accums and shifted north a tad. Some of the runs this week on that model were looking March/November 2018 worthy. Obviously the elevated central and north central parts of the state stand the best chance of seeing any kind of decent accumulations, but we could see accumulating potential even in the Sus Valley. Surface temps are going to be very marginal and it seems that timing is heading towards most of this event being in the daytime though, especially east. I think the biggest thing I see from the models is the snow potential appears to be rate driven. The column temps are there enough if we have a wave of heavier precipitation, and we're going to need a several hour burst of heavy precip to realize any white on the ground with the surface temps.

I had a light coating on the grass and cold surfaces, 0.2” ish. It was snowing decent for a little while last night. It seemed just a couple hundred feet of elevation made the difference between that and a half inch to an inch here off the Laurels, and once below about 1100-1200’ (I’m at about 1300’) there was little to no accum. The Allegheny Front is white of course, I didn’t get a chance to run up and see how much was up there.

Me too lol, I haven't gotten to put mine out since I made it.

I don't know if much of tonight's wave makes it very far east of the mountains, but from I-99/US 220 below I-80 westward into the Laurel's region this is starting to look like a surprise event considering what CTP has in their winter products at the moment compared to the models today. Early HRRR looks into this event are pretty robust, with more northern extent than the NAM and high end advisory snow amounts Cambria/Somerset (Laurels). Models are generally supportive of that region (and even into the surrounding counties) seeing potentially an advisory event "on paper". Temps are warm today obviously, but dew points are very low.. so I don't think getting a timely changeover will be hard once the heavier precip moves in. Given how warm it has been and virtually no preceding or entrenched true cold, this is going to be very springlike and play out more like an early April type wave.. with accums mostly on the grassy surfaces and it might take awhile to actually get anything going on the ground. But timing of this thing overnight is going to help. I think any road issues that pop up will be reserved for the higher Laurel's. Somerset County looks to be the PA place to be for this, and I wouldn't be surprised if parts of that county sees close to the amount the short term guidance is putting out snow wise. I don't think the precip makes it past the the mountains to the Sus Valley heavy enough to make for any accums, even if it does actually mix or changeover. Will have to see how the swath tracks, as it could run the turnpike or perhaps make it a bit further north as the HRRR is suggesting. A decent amount of guidance says I get my biggest snowfall of the season tonight, we'll see lol.

Haha it’s okay. My biggest single event this year was 2.1” back in Jan, of which like an inch of that was actually sleet. I’ve never seen a winter like that here, the bad ones always have at least one half decent event. The only reason I have 15.5” is being right at the foot of the Laurels and getting several inch or less type snows. The airport 15 miles SE of Altoona (KAOO) I think has like 5” for the season. We could get whatever large snowstorm from here out in the next few weeks but it isn’t going to change that stretch of futility. I almost hope that we don’t see anything notable til next winter. Because this winter has pretty much demonstrated what a truly bad one looks like.

I'm bringing this over here. Yea i was reading some of that last night and this morning, which continued over to their banter. I've noticed it seems the forums have been moderated less the last couple winters.. which is fine in some respects as there's no need to get super strict on being on topic or some banter scattered here and there, even in the busier threads (this one is small enough that usually banter isn't an issue). But a couple of those folks down there need 5 posted or banned as it's been reading maybe slightly better than your run of the mill facebook news comment section.