Mount Joy Snowman

We have some friends over right now but I plan on being dialed in for the 0z HRRR, maybe my most anticipated model run in years.

Well I'll be damned, the CMC got out of bed. It's slightly more aggressive with the sleet line but throws out a map that is basically identical to 0z.

What's going on with the Canadians? Did they drink too much again? On the eve of our biggest event in years and they are a no-show ha.

Yep, ended up nearly identical, 12k that is, haven't looked at 3k yet.

NAM will not flinch, same story with sleet overtaking everything by early afternoon.

HRRR nearly identical in terms of evolution and totals to its 12z run. I'd sign up for it right now. Would be kind of fun to be right on the snow line for that long too. Why not ha.

18z HRRR is hilarious bc it's a veritable snow/sleet warzone pretty much right over my house for the entire afternoon. Wild.

Euro holds serve, not many changes from 0z, a smidge drier. Those of us down here may see a little sleet sometime during the late afternoon but hard to tell and doesn't affect totals too much. GFS has already lost but we have a ten round prize fight shaping up between the NAM and Euro. I'm leaning like a 60/40 NAM win.

15z RAP hot off the press, still holding off the sleet for the most part and staying the course. Hey, at least all the crappy models still have our back bahahahaha. I'm riding with the RAP/FV3 combo; what could go wrong!?

The Ukie holds with 10+ for the forum but to be honest I think it's struggling with the sleet depiction and underdoing it a bit, unfortunately. Has a decent primary into western PA and displays a weird orientation of the sleet axis. But I would be thrilled with its result at this point.

If MDT falls to 8" Lancaster is in for a world of hurt ha. I think that's going a bit too far and MDT still gets close to a foot but can't rule it out. Not good if true that upstream is underperforming.

What's discouraging for those of us down this way is the amount of qpf being lost to sleet is growing across all models and with every run and is now very likely to impact snow totals to the point where I believe about half of Lanc Co will see less than 10", perhaps 8". Again, still a very nice storm but the slow bleed leading up to game time is never fun. Most of the forum still looking at 12+ so can't gripe too hard. Comes with the territory living down this way but earlier in the week I never would have thought mixing issues would be a thing with this storm. Frustrating with these temps.

Sleet intrusion more pronounced on 12z GFS, still a nice front end thump. Lancaster ranges from 8-13" from southern border to Etown.

I will be shocked if we see any freezing rain and frankly don't understand the forecasts that are mentioning it. I believe MAG or someone of the like brought this up last night and I agree, just don't see how anything other than frozen is possible with the extreme nature and depth of cold in the column. Even if there is a warm nose that melts the flakes up around 6,000' or so someone is going to need to explain to me how the F it would be possible for that droplet to fall the rest of the way to the surface in THAT cold without refreezing into an ice pellet? Like how?? There is more than enough depth to fall through and lord knows the temps are cold enough for the lowest few thousand feet. It would defy everything I know about winter precip. Someone smarter than me would need to smack some sense into me.

The WRF suite also has copious sleet all through the afternoon hours and slightly reduced its totals from 0z. RRFS continues to mirror the NAM, but even worse, and has 4-7" across Lanc. The Mesos are talking to us. If the globals show further north trends and thermal breakdowns I will officially be a bit nervous.