Jns2183

This comment was a gold mine to explore We’ve all heard the remark: “May always feels like our coldest non-winter month.” On the surface, that sounds statistically absurd. May is objectively warmer than April by the monthly averages. But “feel” is not just a raw average. It is thermal perception, seasonal expectation, and momentum. April is chaotic: a month of high variance, sharp warm spikes, and sudden spring previews. May, by contrast, often starts by lagging behind the psychological benchmark April just created. That is the core of the Seasonal Slow-Start. April frequently sets a thermal ceiling so high that May takes days, and sometimes weeks, to consistently breach it. Using historical records for Middletown-Harrisburg (PATMDT), 1893–2026, I tracked the first date in May when temperatures reached or exceeded several April benchmarks. The result is the “Catch-Up Date.” In over 52% of years, May does not produce a single afternoon as warm as April’s peak until after May 15. Even more striking, in nearly 70% of years, May does not produce a sustained five-day warm stretch equal to April’s best until the final ten days of the month. This is why early May can feel so weirdly disappointing. The month is warmer on paper, but it often opens beneath the emotional standard April already set. When the data is normalized using era-adjusted Z-scores based on a trailing 30-year weighted rolling mean, the effect becomes clearer: after a very warm April, early May can register as a real regression. Compared with other spring and early-summer transitions, May is the outlier. March usually catches February’s top warmth quickly, June catches May quickly, and July catches June almost immediately. But May takes until the second week, on average, to catch April’s top-three warmth. That delay is the statistical footprint of the “cold May” feeling. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I think we forgot the essence of spring The idea that a "normal" April day in the Susquehanna Valley is a comfortable 65/45 split is more of a mathematical ghost than a daily reality. A 30-year rolling window analysis of Harrisburg-Middletown records from 1995 to 2024 reveals that April is less of a steady seasonal climb and more of a chaotic tug-of-war between competing air masses. While 65°F is indeed the mid-month mean, the standard deviation is a staggering 10.5°F—nearly double the volatility seen in the summer months—meaning the "average" is rarely the actual experience. The statistical distribution for April proves this "battle of extremes." In a stable month like July, about 61% of days fall within 5 degrees of the daily normal. In April, that frequency drops to just 35%. Instead of temperatures clustering around the mean in a standard bell curve, the data shows a flattened, high-dispersion pattern. We are far more likely to be swung into a late-winter cold snap or an early-summer heat spike than to sit at the theoretical average. By the time May arrives, the atmosphere begins to settle, with the standard deviation tightening and about 41% of days staying near the mean. April, however, remains the ultimate transitional wildcard. The "normal" day exists on paper, but the month is defined by its swings rather than its stats. If you're planning for a 65-degree afternoon, you're betting on the narrow middle ground of a month that statistically prefers to live in the extremes. [mention=317]Voyager[/mention] your wish on consistency in April is basically a fig dream. That's just not the reality that exists in Pennsylvania. Consistency is for June, July, August Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

It's a lot more than rain goes into that. You have to look at absorption vs run off vs evapotranspiration. We have baked all April. I only got about 55% of normal preceiptitation. Go look at the PEMN sites on pa climate website. They have soil moisture at 3-5 different depths. That really tells the story. This super El nino building is not good either Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

Hopefully they are properly hedged and insured. However, I'm sure those costs are through the roof Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

.82" which puts me at 2.42' for month. Just over 50%[emoji769] of normal. We are not in good shape if we don't get a top 20 wet May. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I'm really sorry to hear this. That cold February followed by March warmth followed by April 8th freeze then hyper Summer before the 2.6-3std deviation freeze on 21st was the perfect trap. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

A little thought experiment. What do you feel is the worst case meterological scenario rack the lower Susquehanna valley has a realistic chance of facing the rest of this century. Something that doesn't get talked about enough for this area is the setup that truly keeps me up at night. It's a deep Greenland block anchoring a stationary front right along the spine of the mountains to our west, timed perfectly with a tropical system on approach. The PRE (the days before lee featured a pre, and it wouldn't have taken that much different timing for hurricane Katia which fed the pre, to be this storm) Days two and three before landfall, small shortwaves combined with a tropical depression remnant riding up over a stalled front to our West in the mountains due to a strong, south based, slowly retreating rex block, low level moisture from our hurricane start training over the same geography repeatedly. Due to the angle of approach the moisture tap is already running full blast hundreds of miles ahead of the center. We're talking three to eight inches of rain before the storm even gets close. Ground is done. Fully saturated. Soil is weakened around every root plate in the metro. Then the approach angle shifts. Forward speed jumps from maybe ten to thirty mph as the block partially erodes and the storm finds its exit. The damage from that sequence is already locked in before a single tropical wind gust arrives. Now put the track just west of the valley so we're sitting in the right front quadrant, winds from the southeast, additive component of forward motion stacked on top of rotation. Even if the winds only land somewhere between Hazel and Sandy that's a catastrophic tree loss event on a seventy year old suburban canopy that has never been tested. The part nobody plans for is the utilities. Crews are staged south for whatever hit the coast first. Forecast uncertainty from the block interaction blew the seventy two hour window you need to pre-position resources here. The SSE wind vector exposes trees weakest side to worst winds. Many of the roads 5-10 minutes from camp hill basically have a tree canopy for miles due to how thick and close the trees grow. Those roads become impassable with 20+ trees blocking it per mile in heavy forest. All those railroads like that taking away from two to four weeks actually become open We get weeks without power in a lot of places, not days. The situation in rural areas is more similar to Helene and Katrina with being cut off. This is one where overall emergency managers can make the correct statistical rational choice and because of timing and non linearity it still becomes a disaster like none other. The same setup that sends the the cat 4 at landfall hurricane rocketing up here at 30-50 mph (hazel which saw 98mph at DC and close to it in York was only going 30mph while the 38' hurricane through Long Island was at 55mph and that Forwardvmotion gets added to the winds on the east side) is the one that stalls the front, pierce the low-level tropical moisture into it causing the pre. So that is it. My crazier 1 in 10,000 year scenario for it even happening on the east coast period involves an upper Midwest drought not unlike the one preceding the 1871 Pestigo firestorm, a potent shortwave from that direction that perfectly hits a window of just an hour or two to cause the rapidly coming storm to occlude in a manner that produces a stinger jet like the 1987 storm that hit the Uk. A small area the size of the lsv on the south to ssw flank would be in overlap area due to shape of Appalachian mountains and track. The stinger jet would produce gusts over 125+ with sustained over 85. That area would of overlap with insane tornado parameters that in the perfect situation would give us (early October) cape above 2200, SRH 450+ with 135 degree turning between 850 and 500mb. STP estimated at 8+ easy, LCL 250-500 meters. The model producing these values went ape shit especially due to dry air from upper Midwest. It's one of those things that's possible but so far unlikely that planning is fruitless. That 1 in 10,000 year event was just the pieces coming together like this. You can't even. Calculate a return period for alot if areas due to Continental drift and long term climate. But hey, if your area manages to get a stinger jet and ef4 tornados from the same system I'd bet the on the Apocalypse happening before I would bet on being random weather. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

My daughter's science project we picked was recording the sound of rain underneath a pot on a deck. She got an A and I've had way to much fun since with the data. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

Does anyone have any experience with using QGIS here? Particularly importing LIDAR maps the government made to build a horizon analysis that look at heights of the land and of the vegetation/forest on it? If you have experience with any of the mentioned items above, especially a good tutorial for QGIS I would appreciate it. That software is kicking my ass. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

.42" here. The soil moisture levels needed this Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

We've had such an above normal april that when comparing to other years like it when stands out is that may tends to be below normal in almost every case. Also the kinda of rain we need, slow soaking, long duration, usually comes with cut of lows, east winds and temperatures in the 60's during June and 50's during May Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

My dad had one hit his neighborhood. He has no power or Internet and he hears the chainsaw going. Right up means about 1,200 ft there and that looks like about 100 knots g2g at peak Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I think this year we see some action. In May. Although with these temperatures that may get pushed to April. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I just want to get it as cold as possible going into this monstrosity. Our Average high the past 25 years this week is 65 degrees which appears to be our low temperature this week Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I have everyone complaining how cold I have the house this morning but I call it prepping for this week. The ac goes on the minute the sun breaks out today. I currently have ambient temperature at 61 degrees inside Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

That seems like a road perfect for experiencing a NDE storm chasing Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

If you're in the mood the nerdout, I’ve been drifting into the "ghost math" of how we actually capture the sky. It turns out our rain gauges are essentially professional liars, especially when the wind is busy whisking our snow away or the radar beams are overshooting the action entirely. I’ve pulled together a little guide on the invisible physics behind it all, from the way a breeze "deflects" a snowflake right past the collector to why our local airport totals might be missing a good 15% of the real story. It’s dive into fluid dynamics and PA weather quirks, perfect for anyone who wants to see the logic that turns raw data into the actual ground truth. https://jns182wx.github.io/Gauge_Bias_Correction/ I have a couple of calculators for anyone to try figure out their own biases Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

To the wisdom filled folks here who have any remembrance of the famous northeast 5+ year drought what do you remember. Reading up on it in context of the 1960's was a wild ride. It appears states were preparing to come to blows with other states, like drawing up national guard plans, to secure their water due to some ridiculous poor planning. The Delaware river was site to a full on war against the salinity encroachment not threatened to make all drinking water in se pa undrinkable. Throwing the crazy politics and daily bombings and it seems like a wild ride. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

.03" to go with my .48" sunday Lancaster county is doing a whole better than Franklin and especially Adams this week. Adams has fallen off a cliff Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

Those stations I posted about from PEMN have soil moisture and temperature at 3 depths Plant Available Water. 10\text{cm}: Moisture for your Lawn. (Currently in a deficit/drying phase). 20\text{cm}: Moisture for your Shrubs and Garden. (Currently stable, near baseline). 50\text{cm}: Moisture for your Trees. (Currently very healthy and high). Watch moisture after it rains and during dry spells. They signal everything The rain past Sunday never even with dent on the deeper sensors. The upper sensor we already are below where we were on Sunday. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

If people are not aware I wanted to let them know about the PEMN Network Penn state's putting a lot of places that are rural. We're talking about many thousands of dollar professional stations that put out excellent one minute data that can be seen in real time. If you go to the Pennsylvania climate website and look for PEMN viewer Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

I was at Hershey Park for 7 hours Saturday. This weather would have been much preferable. Mid 80's and the sun beating in those lines was not enjoyable. At least I didn't go Friday and have to deal with that giant fight. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

My Magnus Opus of why I can never be mad at preceiptitation reports after a big storms.. We've all been there. NEXRAD shows 0.50" for your pixel. Your CoCoRaHS gauge reads 0.22". Your neighbor two blocks over posts 0.81". Both of you are right. The radar might also be right. Here's why, and why it gets genuinely alarming during intense convection. The Geometry First I'm 73.8 miles from KCCX at State College. At that range, the 1° beam has expanded to 6,803 feet in diameter — that's 1.29 miles across. The center of that beam is floating 7,882 feet above my roof. The super-resolution pixel covering my house is 0.830 square miles / 2.15 km². The legacy pixel was 1.660 square miles / 4.30 km². That single dBZ value stamped on that pixel represents the average backscatter of a volume of air roughly the size of 12 Disneylands hovering a mile and a half above the ground. Now imagine 100 top-of-the-line rain gauges evenly distributed across that pixel. Super-res spacing works out to one gauge every 481 feet. I stand dead-center in my grid cell. By Pythagoras, my four nearest gauges are at the corners — each 340 feet away from me. Here's Where It Gets Uncomfortable For well-behaved stratiform rain — your warm-frontal overrunning, your classic nimbostratus — everything is fine. CV of 0.10 to 0.16. My four nearest gauges within a few hundredths of each other. Radar is defensible. Life is good. But bump up into Category 7 — intense convective core directly over the pixel — and the math falls apart spectacularly. Radar reports 0.50". CV = 1.00. Standard deviation = 0.50". Lognormal distribution gives a pixel-wide range of 0.090" to 1.391" at the P5/P95 level. That's a 15:1 spread across my 0.830 square mile pixel, between gauges that are less than half a mile from each other. But here's the part that genuinely made me sit back: my four nearest gauges — 340 feet away from me, about the length of a city block — have a realistic P10/P90 spread of 0.250" to 0.810". Three-to-one variation between gauges I can practically see from my porch. Both are physically correct measurements of the same event. Scale that up to Category 8 — extreme/flash flood/training cells — and it becomes almost philosophical. Radar reports 0.50". Pixel range P5/P95: 0.052" to 1.613". That's a 31:1 ratio. My four nearest gauges: 0.157" to 0.965". Six-to-one. The gauge 340 feet north of me reads under two tenths. The gauge 340 feet east reads close to an inch. The radar says half an inch. Every single instrument is functioning perfectly. At 1.00" reported by the radar the numbers get worse: Cat 7 gives my nearest four a spread of 0.500" to 1.620" and Cat 8 gives 0.314" to 1.930". The gauge closest to me physically could read less than a third of an inch while the one a city block away reads nearly two inches. During the same event. At the same time. Why This Matters for Verification Work This isn't a measurement error problem. This isn't instrument quality. This is the fundamental physics of convective precipitation at sub-kilometer scales, documented by Peleg et al. (2013) with a dense gauge network and confirmed repeatedly in the literature. Rainfall within a single radar pixel during convection can vary by over 100% — and that finding came from a network covering a smaller area than my NEXRAD pixel at 73.8 miles. When someone posts their CoCoRaHS total and it's half what radar showed during a summer storm, the correct response isn't "your gauge is off." The correct response is "yes, that is entirely expected and physically consistent with everything we know about convective precipitation structure." The radar isn't wrong. Your gauge isn't wrong. The atmosphere just doesn't care about our need for tidy single-number summaries. The only honest statement you can make about precipitation during a Cat 7/8 event with a single gauge is: this is what fell at this exact point. Full stop. Extrapolating to even the next block over is an act of faith, not measurement. Methodology: Lognormal distribution fit to literature CV values by precip type (Ciach & Krajewski 1999, 2006; Peleg et al. 2013; Jensen & Pedersen 2005). Local near-gauge CV compressed by exponential spatial correlation model. KCCX beam geometry calculated using 4/3 Earth radius refraction. All pixel areas computed from actual Camp Hill–KCCX range of 73.8 miles. Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

A Few Things That Should Make You Uncomfortable At 100 ft — 62,351 ft³. Roughly the size of a large house. This is the only range where the radar is sampling anything resembling a point. At 1 mile — 92 ft beam diameter, still smaller than a football field. Still reasonable. Still vaguely honest. At 10 miles — beam is now 922 ft wide. Bigger than the range gate itself. The pancake starts to make sense. At 65 miles (Camp Hill) — ~22 billion ft³. The beam diameter (~5,990 ft) is now wider than it is deep by a factor of 7. Your "data point" is a disc, not a cube. And it's floating at ~5,200 ft AGL. At 100 miles — 54.9 billion ft³, beam nearly 1.75 miles wide, center beam at 9,708 ft AGL. At this point the radar is essentially sampling the lower stratosphere and calling it precipitation data. Depth is always 822 feet. It took me a number of ever increasing pancake sizes and a traffic cone of unsavory origins to visualize this. This pulse and about 50;more with 97% overlap get run through a bunch of algorithms and out pops a pixel over us. So if radar makes you want to pull your hair out, this is why. America’s Boeing Everett Factory, 25 miles north of Seattle, remains the world’s largest building by volume and world’s largest factory. Workers assemble Boeing aircraft—including the new 787 Dreamliner—within this 472,000,000-cubic-foot factory. My single radar pixel contains roughly 47 Boeing Everett Factories worth of air Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

The atmosphere is a terrible heater and a spectacular refrigerator, and it's been this way for 4.5 billion years with zero apologies. Seriously, haha, what happens when air heats up. It rises and cools. One state requires energy in, another requires nothing Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk