jwilson

The long-term pattern still not showing much sign of abating. The west dries up, and while we aren't quite as dramatically under a trough the whole time, we're still wet-looking for almost the entire period. Really everywhere from the plains on east. 2-3" over the next week.

The trough-in-the-East pattern still holds in the long-term. It doesn't look supremely wet, though, so it's kind of a mixed bag (only 2" of rain through the end of the month). The only real ridging in the conus is pretty narrowly focused over the central plains. This pattern will limit the heat potential, which I guess most people prefer. How much rain we end with is the question and if things change come July.

Looks like that's the pattern for the foreseeable future. Hudson Bay highs with everything rotating underneath and cutoff. Probably 3-4 weeks at least. I'm guessing by the end we'll have made up for most (if not all) of the deficit.

Next week looks like a repeat of this week with the low further south. Kind of a depressing pattern if that holds up. Figured we'd pay for that nice stretch of weather at some point.

Friday could be another bad smoke day. Courtesy FireSmoke.ca - this is Friday morning say between 8 AM and Noon. We'll see if it holds.

When is the last time PIT hit 100F? I think the last time I can remember temps that high out here was like 2012 or 2013. I lived in Morgantown back then and we did manage to go over 100F. But I think that's it. Seems pretty rare for PIT to go up there. I feel like we haven't even had that many serious heat waves over the last decade. Perhaps I'm used to worse summers coming from Philly.

GFS looks bad for the first week of May. 30s and 40s (as highs). We'll see if it holds, but that's not a terribly great start to pre-summer. I knew we'd pay for those early 80s, though. Snow flurries the last two days.

For me it's just over this particular season. The winter was dull; we only got to track maybe two total events. Most were 10-day storms that disappeared after a couple model runs. There wasn't much to get excited about. Now I'd rather get some good golfing weather for the spring before the heat really sets in, rather than a continuation of fake winter. It's nuisance cold, for the most part. I'd prefer some temps between cold and hot, say 60s and low 70s with minimal humidity. Spring and Fall used to be good for that, haha.

Sadly looks like we're mired in fake winter for a little while longer where we keep getting shots of cold air. Perhaps a good year to bet on some April snow. Crap.

Outside for a while today and it felt like summer towards the end. Winter can die now, peacefully I hope, but we'll probably get something now that many have lost interest. Still don't buy long-range cold threats. No reason to based on the winter we've had.

I give it less than 48 hours before it shows a cutter.

Instinctively I want to say these years are sort of typical in terms of longer-term La Nina alignments. It's something I should probably research if no one else beats me to it. Granted, past analogs may be losing their value and there's so many variables to account for each winter. I'd still be curious about the extent of the similarities.

I think this is one reason people still lean into denial that any sort of global-scale climate change is occurring. It's not always obvious on an individual basis, and this is how we humans tend to perceive things. To say the world is gradually heating up is a bit too "abstract" in the sense that, on a day-to-day level, we don't really notice it. The other issue is we can't over-attribute singular events (or seasons) to climate change with our limited scale of knowledge. There's the causality versus correlation dynamic, and we don't have a firm understanding of it yet. We'll probably all be dead before we get the chance to figure out if 2022-23 was a bum winter because of climate change, or more likely that's something we'll never know with any kind of certainty. (And mini-rant here, but I'm not terribly concerned with offending peoples' "sensibilities" on a topic such as this on a weather board; it has been artificially politicized.)

Typical big game that's lost on the finest of margins. The Chiefs' biggest (and pretty much only) mistake the entire game was a missed field goal. Eagles gave KC 7 free points. Then allowed a big punt return. Made a number of poorly timed penalties (not the first such incidents this season). Yeah, the defense was miserable, but the Chiefs' defense wasn't exactly managing the game, either. Time of possession was never going to matter with Mahomes on the other side. The Eagles had to play a perfect game and they didn't. It was basically the same story in SB LII but the defense made a timely stop in that game to get the win. The defense made zero plays last night. On the bright side, Hurts is a real dude. The mistake was as costly as it gets, but he played so well otherwise. The question is whether the Eagles can turn this defense around over the next few years to make more playoff runs and then long-term OL health. I'm not really anticipating they'll be able to make it back next season, and that's one reason this loss is so egregious. But maybe Howie can work some more magic? Draft is crucial. They need cost-controlled assets that can actually contribute.

Bring on the warm weather. Feels so nice today. This winter is butt and I've lost interest in tracking digital snow. Certainly means we're in for a blockbuster March.

It's just one of those years. I think people have attempted to over-explain this or over-attribute it to other things, but even places north of us have been getting shafted on the snow. New England included. Meanwhile, it's snowing plenty out west. The pendulum will swing the other way at some point. Maybe not next year but that's not something to predict, really.

Yeah rain in the South Hills. Changed about 15 minutes ago. Snow accum of maybe 0.5" before the switch.

Well, not really a surprise. Will be interesting to see if we get any accumulation. It's not even snowing all that hard in Morgantown which means quite a bit of virga and dry air abounds. As the 850 gets closer we will saturate, and as Ritual mentioned we might get some CAA to temporarily cool us. But then how long before the changeover.

Yeah, simplistically speaking, the unfortunate trend in the short-term models has been to dry this thing out (compare each run from 0Z yesterday to 0Z today). Areas adjacent to the deform band under subsidence will have the normal issues. I feel like I've spent too much time on this thing, to be honest. We can nowcast but I wonder if even 1" for the southern areas of Allegheny looks like a generous prediction. We'll be warming into the 40s and raining so most will be lost anyway. We really are masochists around these parts.

This will definitely be a nowcast event. The SREF plumes are down to a shade over 1" on the mean. There are three higher outliers (4.5", 5.5", and 6.5"). If you take those away, the mean comes down to about half an inch total. Pretty dry. It also depicts the surface above freezing at this hour. Unfortunately, the HRRR doesn't show the rest of the column, but this is likely either a true mix or white rain. If we do get a period of no precip, it will help to warm things up a little faster. The NAM at this time shows similar surface temps and marginal 850s (Bethel Park is above freezing while Northern Allegheny is still all snow). It is drier away from the frontogenic forcing so it makes sense to see us getting warm tongued early.

It's near impossible to trust anything in this pattern. Granted, it's the fantasy range so hardly worth analyzing, but even when the thermal boundary sets up in Northern Alabama/Georgia, the GFS still wants to cut the storm to our west. It's pretty laughable at this point. We're just on the wrong side of the boundary this year with everything. It's probably safe to assume all viable threats will cut until they don't. No blocking + southeast ridge, absent a well-timed TPV interaction.

GEFS average is 3-4" for the Wednesday event, which would happen early and in marginal temperatures. SREF plumes average closer to 2" and it's actually been dropping the last four runs. Like what we saw early this morning, that probably means it's more like a "Snain" (or white rain) and the roads may remain clear, especially if treated. The NAM depicts a big old dryslot, which certainly isn't unprecedented. No doubt that would cut totals considerably because on the backend of that dry slot is nothing but rain. I think the SREF blend (which includes the ARW) is picking up on this, as well, hence the lower figures. The frontogenic forcing looks great on paper, it's just a matter of whether we see dry air intrusion that cuts the initial band.

Well, at least there's no shortage of activity, even in the long range. We'll likely continue to have temperature issues, but if we can time something right, we may be able to eke out a moderate event, at some point. Otherwise we may rely on tiny doses of snow to add up to something meaningful on paper.

There are numerous factors now going against the midweek system. Unfortunately, it is basically compound interest of the issues we've had this winter. First, you have a +PNA spike and -EPO ridging all the way up the west coast. Normally that's a good thing for us, but this is too much of a good thing and it creates a massive slope on the downside of the ridge. That forces the low pressure down in the southwest to start strengthening too soon. Normally, that low pressure would gain longitude before amplifying (think of a wave pattern that looks slightly more symmetrical). Moving west to east instead of north to south. Instead, it rolls up over the four corners which allows it to pull west as it typical in an amplifying system like this. Second, we also have a pumping southeast ridge which is raising the boundary out ahead of that low. If it wasn't for that initial Sunday system, I'm pretty sure this would be a big old Nebraska blizzard. It would be possible to win in this scenario with a well-time TPV pass or an impressive -NAO block, but we don't have either of those coming along. The results are, unfortunately, another cutter. I suppose this can still change, it just seems incredibly unlikely given that the downstream affects can't overcome the pacific and other factors. The Sunday system can't stall out over the 50/50 region and work as a crude block because - again - there's no -NAO to lock it in place. Everything blows right on through. That Sunday system also trending weaker hurts us, although that does give us a better potential on Sunday. I thought the midweek system had better overall potential, though, and that's why I was somewhat rooting against the Sunday wave. The Sunday system has a much lower snow ceiling, but I guess we'll take a 1-3" event given how the season has gone.

I really want to buy into that Wednesday threat. I think it makes more sense, because the Sunday/Monday wave could act as a true 50/50, usher in a better cold airmass and perhaps even rotate in some "loose" blocking in southern Canada. But a lot depends on what happens with that first shortwave. It could push the boundary into an ideal spot, or it could move it too far southeast of us and we watch as an ocean storm batters the coast. In this sense, we might actually root for an overamped fail on the first wave to keep the boundary in a better spot on the follow-up. A gulf mover rolling through the TN Valley with an earlier coastal transfer looks better and is a more typical winning signal. It is also harder for a system of that design to gain too much latitude for us. The cold air still isn't great so it wouldn't be overly difficult to see potential mixing problems.