jwilson

Ended up driving in last night. Rain had mostly dissipated. This morning we're presently on the dry side or very eastern edge of the precip which should soften flooding locally, though it looks bad just to my west.

Having to drive into Philly this week. I was originally planning tomorrow morning, but looks like I should re-think that option and do it tonight, instead. I've checked the models, and the GFS is faster than most of the others (Euro, CMC, etc). That said, the Hurricane models themselves don't look particularly appealing during the morning hours tomorrow. Seems between 10 and 3 could be the peak, give or take.

I was in 8th grade at the time and remember getting out of school early, only I had to walk home in the absolutely pouring rain. There were some places locally that used to flood quite often in the 90s and early aughts, I don't think they've had those issues in a while. Whether that's a change in weather or mitigation, I'm not sure, but I do think some of those rain storms have been unequaled.

I'm a storm chaser at heart, so mostly I'm interested in storm development for something to follow. Yesterday's early morning derecho that swept across the state acted like a broom for our area and essentially pushed all the instability south and east of us. The resulting outflow setup convection across extreme southern PA into WV. Locally, we haven't had a real thunderstorm since April 8th. I have to think two months during the spring without an event is pretty unusual for this area, although June and July are the peak months on average. The cooler spring is the main culprit, of course. Considering it will maintain 80s through October nowadays I guess we have to be okay with it. We'll likely make up for it later. Yep. It's bad enough missing out during the winter months, but now we keep missing during thunderstorm season, too? In the end I'm sure it's just a blip. Things will turn around at some point. Theoretically they should, anyway.

Another "slight" risk of severe today and it looks like, once again, Pittsburgh metro and points north will miss out. Depends on your perspective, of course, but it seems like the metro area has been having some bad luck lately on the stormy weather. Everything seems to be missing south or farther north.

At this time of year, if anything over a trace would be historic, a 9" snowfall would be biblical, and I'd consider Armageddon right around the corner.

We've had a trace of snow in May twice since 2000 ('01-'02 & '15-'16).. let's go for a third.

If it wasn't for today, we would have had a higher max temp in January (71) this year than in April (70 was previous max). Oof.

Well that was an intense line, definitely one of the most dynamic cells I've witnessed since living here. Tornado warning popped on the TV, but it wasn't really for us. Hope you're all good up in New Kensington. Twitter report said there was a tornado near Markle. I was watching power flashes in the distance from my viewpoint. Actually a lot of other strange lighting colors during the storm, as well.

We got a very brief and minor bout of hail yesterday with that "supercell," but it seemed the actual hail core went south of us, closer to Canonsburg. Our hail was minuscule in comparison (pea size at the most).

For 2009, even I got screwed a tad on that one being in the Philly suburbs. Philly measured 23" and I got 12" - that entire winter was full of tight gradient snow storms.

If Wichita Falls, TX is getting a bigger snow than we've seen in years, you know there's something funky going on in weather town.

Long-range models can't decipher a good pattern to save their life, but as soon as a bad one appears: lock it in! You'd think I'd have learned by now that if the Euro shows a bad result, that's the outcome 90% of the time. (Also, if it shows a good result, that only works out 10% of the time). ... What's confirmation bias?

I don't know how others feel, but I prefer a snowy December to snow in March. Kind of disappointing that we've been stuck in this pattern lately where the snow doesn't really show up until January or even February. Still, Pittsburgh is way over due for an >8" storm. Because it isn't unprecedented, I'll consider this some relatively short-term trend. There have been snow lulls in history, extended ones usually followed up by a massive season of >70" total. As an illustration: Six of the last eight years we've had more snow in March than December. The long-term average still favors December, but they are close.

Yeah, I get why they were complaining (I think they were at historic levels of futility for snow), but everyone knew they'd play catch-up before long. Some people just need perspective, really. There's quite a few in the MA forum especially that would go insane living here. I can't imagine some of those guys making it 10 years without a double-digit event.

This just about sums it up for us. Welcome to the Screw Zone™ for all time.

The more these rain storms occur, the more I think this just isn't our winter. It was 0F last night and is close to 50F today. The atmosphere wants to rain here and that's it, as evidenced by our wettest year on record. This is a harsh pattern we've been set in since mid-2018 probably. If we're lucky, we'll dry out just in time for next winter.

We're well below normal so far (if we finish that way, it would make 3 of the last 4 winters). I agree that expectations for this winter were high. Things looked to align, but at this point, we're going to need a backloaded winter. The blocking that I think we require continues to be two weeks away in the long-term. Maybe by February it will actually coalesce. I'm hoping we don't revert to a bad pacific pattern or lose our moisture conveyor if the blocking comes together, but that's always possible.

Always a bridesmaid ...

I don't mind transient warmth in winter so much, say a day or two in between pattern flexes. I'm not a huge fan, however, of two to three weeks of the doldrums. Maybe we have once chance as the "new" pattern shuffles, but it doesn't look all that promising right now.

At least as I understand it, the TD can't count until you've become a runner, and you can't become a runner until you complete the process of the catch. If you're going to the ground as you catch the ball, you need to control the ball through the ground (no ground-assisted movement) or you can't complete the process of the catch, and in turn you can't become a runner. The rule is extremely convoluted, but it isn't the first time someone has been screwed by it. If the rule is called consistently, that's probably all you can ask for. My issue is whether they could truly overturn the call on the field. Replay evidence has to be 100%, zero doubt, conclusive. I think it's close, but that's not zero doubt. This is from an objective POV, by the way, as I'm not really a Steelers fan (sorry folks).

I need to move to Mammoth Lakes, CA. They're looking at another 3-6 feet of snow after getting something like 10 feet last week. Wouldn't have to kill myself model watching all the time when you seasonally get what we average locally over a decade or more.