RitualOfTheTrout

Every person who has analyzed the models for a snowstorm has failed, but where they have failed you will succeed. I've seen models take a blizzard away in one 6hr run, men have poured weeks of their life analyzing output only to smoke cirrus but despite the models ability to depress our hopes their strengths are still based on a world of rules. So your saying I'll be able to control the atmosphere so all of PA gets a historic blizzard? No, I'm saying when your ready you won't have too. You'll realize your climo sucks and you need to move or find a new hobby.

The way some of these games go with things happening to keep people watching to the very end sure does make you wonder... To my above comment: This. I can't imagine they'd be able to script these without league, ownership, coaches and players all involved and no way with that many involved someone doesn't talk about it, especially say someone like Antonio brown lol. Sure you could have officials throw a flag on borderline situations but a lot of these also would require the right plays to be called, players to actually execute or not execute so a desired outcome happens etc. The simplest answer here is probably right, the league has a good product and teams are generally close enough in competitive measure that random bounces / plays are enough to result in close games.

I agree, I'd take a 2-3 event like this with cold and snow showers after vs a 4-6 event that ends as rain and melts by noon.

Same, just shy of 2", we will probably pick up another tenth or so with the light flurries / snow showers to make it to an even 2" Overall this was a well forecast (local and NWS) and most models had us in the 2-3 inch range 24 hours out, no surprises good or bad. Will be nice to have a day the looks and feels like winter today, to bad we don't have a more NW flow, with the warm lakes could probably have had a couple more widespread decent bands make it down this way. Afterwards looks like a bit of a roller-coaster ride in terms of temperatures, with plenty of tracking. It will be interesting to see how the pattern evolves and if a bigger storm materializes.

Measured 1.5 around 10pm, back edge band is pivoting through now, getting a little bit of wind with it and some more moderate rates. Expect to end somewhere around 2.25 when it's all over but probably won't get a measurement until morning.

Measured 1in so far. Roads are all covered. Nothing like snow falling in the low 20s.

They are still sticking to 1-3 inches across Allegheny county which would not meet criteria for an advisory (3 or more but less than warning criteria over 50% of the zone- in 12-36 hours). Based on that I can see why they don't have an advisory, whether or not that is what we get is another story. Everything I've seen has total qpf .15-.25 so its close even with ratios. I'm pretty confident most of us see at least 2-3. The best lift doesn't appear to be coinciding with the DGZ outside of a brief window so even though we have cold temperatures we won't see super high ratios.

Got all the Christmas light down and inside this afternoon. Nothing like being outside in the brisk January cold with the smell of snow in the air, low sun, and lowering cloud deck as a snow storm approaches.

I've also noted the subtle but consistent ticks NW of the precip field over the past 36 hours or so, should that be accurate and continue through game time certainly bodes well to maybe snag another inch or so. If the 12z models are NW again today NWS possibly expands advisories to include Allegheny / Armstrong / Indiana. The speed of the system though will still be tough to overcome.

I agree, realistically this didn't have that big of an upside for our area. Seems like most places are going to be in a 1-3 / 2-4 type range with possibly a very narrow stripe of 5+ way further SE. Just getting 1-2 inches though is fine by me, we can break the December snowfall total by a magnitude of 10 in a single storm. I think it's been since late November since I've even had any snow on the ground. Going forward in time, the pattern is at least conducive for more snow chances and we might get downright cold for awhile. The overall trough axis in the longer range is probably not ideal (to far east) but that's far from set in stone as we've seen good looks change slightly in ways that degrade the pattern. Could easily see a clipper type pattern setup for a time (Whos up for a Saskatchewan screamer?), and those won't even really show on models until the short / medium range and track and interaction with the lakes etc will all remain short term forecasts.

That piece of energy streaming across north of the system needs to trend weaker / faster. It's knocking down heights ahead of our storm and since it's not an overly powerful system to begin with that is likely one of the leading causes that would limit how far NW this can go and ultimately how fast it can strengthen. That type of interaction probably won't be modeled very well in advance.

NAM looking better at 00z. At the end of it's run and all that but a solid step towards having a storm vs previous runs.

I'd take that and run after the awful December.

I think as we head into January there will be at least a few interludes with cooler temperatures, but as you mention timing those brief favorable periods with a storm will only complicate the necessary setups we need for a decent storm. Outside of something minor it looks like an uphill battle for any big storms that would produce mainly frozen have much of a chance, the typical cold chasing moisture behind a frontal passage with NW flow or snow to slop / rain storm are likely the more favored outcomes. It seems the Nina base state is overwhelming the MJO, phase 7 should be acceptable for January but just not seeing much of a response in the pattern. It does seem over the past several years whatever the dominant features at play close in on record breaking territories, maybe a sign of the impacts of climate change? December thus far is +6 in temperature departure and +.5 for precipitation (only .3in total of which has been snow). We only look to build on both of those to close out the month, which makes it hard to imagine January could be any worse in terms of snow prospects.

Not that our preference has any effect, but if we could get warm and dry / cold and dry / or cold and wet (snow) I'd take any of those over warm and wet, nothing worse than overcast / fog / rain and the short days imho.

Models seem to keep washing out the SE Ridge past day 7-10, so things look better a week out only to hedge warmer. Maybe 5-7 days ago it looked colder Christmas Eve / Day with maybe some light snow, now 50s and rain. It's going to be hard to mitigate that record -PNA we have going on right now. This December may be the all time record for that. Right now it's basically a shut out pattern. I think our best shot may be into the first part of the new year, if we can time some blocking and at least a relaxation of the SE Ridge / - PNA pattern I could see a decent cold shot, and hopefully at least a better chance to time a shortwave with some cold air but think we will could be fighting warm / wet vs cold / dry. All patterns relax even if they only reload, our hope may lie in timing something with those, on the converse if we lose the high latitude blocking and the -PNA flexes again I think some record highs will get broken.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I tend to agree odds favor a below average snowfall winter given everything we can see right now. There is always the chance mother nature throws a curve ball, and even in a lousy pattern brief interludes of something favorable as things re-shuffle and re-establish the lousy base state can yield a few windows of opportunity, and if you get lucky with a few storms during those windows then even though your general thoughts on the winter pattern were correct from a pure numbers standpoint maybe it doesn't look like that bad of winter at the end of the season. Not a big fan of a crap pattern getting established during December in a La-Nina which typically favors colder and snowy starts. Maybe the "front loaded" portion of Winter was the end of November snow and cold.. I hope not. Overall I think this makes sense, from a statistical standpoint if you start off below average in the beginning with snow then you need some above average hits later on to make up for it, which with La-Nina favoring an early start to Winter puts you even further behind the 8 ball for later months to make up for a bad start vs say an El-Nino with typically less snowy starts and but a solid chance later in the season. We can always hope that since the start is not typcial La-Nina maybe the middle and end won't be either. It's going to be hard to beat last year in any of the upcoming years in my book for a great December, big storm on the 16th, then another storm on Christmas Eve and a white Christmas is about as good as it gets. As I get older its easier to just have an "it is what is" attitude towards this hobby, when I was younger I'd let emotions get the best of me, and after all when you wait all year for snow storm tracking and you get nothing who wouldn't be disappointed, but that's the price of admission for something we have zero control over. Anyways, hey, look outside its snowing now.

It's a LaNina winter, long range in these Winters always seems to look good only to deteriorate back to Nina climo as we close in. That being said usually front loaded in LaNinas so hopefully we can get a couple scores in December, although who knows as things don't seem to behave as expected in the new climate normal.

Nice little appetizer for winter. It was a nice change to be doing holiday decorating with cold and snow on the way.

Thankfully it's later in the year / we didn't have a lot of instability cause it sounds like per that discussion other things were lining up so the storms wanted to spin.

Looks like the warned storm weakened enough they let the tornado warning expire.. No complaints here as it was aimed right at me.

You know what they say, every tornado warning after October 15th equals a foot of snow in the coming winter, and we are at 4 for the area today. By they I mean I just coined the phrase now.

Got a warning for Tornado, looks like three of them in the area, anything sighted or just radar indicated so far?

Nothing exciting here. Rumble or two of thunder and some heavy rain.

I'd think areas under that heavy band earlier had to have recorded at least .5-1 more than they got out at the airport but that's pure speculation.