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Central PA Late January Thread Part III


Rick G

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Weather World concurs on mainly sleet for UNV after initial round of snow - no mention of any ZFR for us. Total of 3-8" -- that would be just fine -- I'll take sleet over glaze ice any day.

I think sleet will last longer around State College than many think it will. From experience, many progged freezing rain events underwhelmed because sleet took longer to switch over than they were supposed to. I'm not sure what it really is, maybe the fact that UNV has a good thousand feet of space to refreeze raindrops because of the surrounding mountaintops, but sleet just tends to stick around there. But eventually the freezing rain looks like it win out, and when it does it could be very dangerous especially when it's the heaviest batch of precip overhead and it's still in the 20s. From what I hear there's at least a half a foot of snow on the ground and it's been cold enough recently, so trees/powerlines could take quite a bit of accretion from that. Campus might not be as bad because of the many heated sidewalks/streets, but the trees might take some damage if it gets bad enough. I've seen it a couple of times with less.

I hate icestorms, and I probably always will because of my experiences up there. At least it's the one kind of storm Penn State usually closes for.

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Every time the models say it will warm up it never does. 3 ice storm I have seen here they said it would go above freezing and it never did till the event was over or not at all. Via the 2 ice storms in 2008 are good examples. I think they called for under .25" ice we got .5".

I agree with this 100%. I have lived around here for 33 years, and CAD almost always is underestimated.

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I know I will get flamed for this but, I know what you mean. There is something magical about having mankind humbley bow down to mother nature, where our technology is no match for her savage power. Living without electricity kinda gives you that primal instinctive survival feeling :)

Ya so I don't have power for a while maybe. Oh well I'll live. It's not too often you could see 3/4 of an inch of ZR.

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Haha, hey sleet can be underrated really. If you get some sleet in your snowpack it'll last forever. The verdicts still out yet on if the other models/New NAM are too warm. I still would place my weight at this short term range on the NAM/SREF for ptypes and thermal profiles since they are displaying the best illustration of what things should be like with a high in place. And its always a fight in central PA with these types of events with a high. I wanna see what happens tonight/tomorrow morning with respect to the placement of this initial snowfall. But before i get too involved with discussing the rest of the region, I'll say that Potter County and especially near the NY border will stay mainly snow with perhaps a short period where sleet gets involved. Should be at least a good 8-12" there I think.

I went a lil more in depth looking at the 18z NAM a bit ago. The 850s are def warmer than they were as you can see from the hour 39 that JMister put up. Theres still a decided dent through CPA at 850, with the +2 line dipping to near State College or so and the +4 dipping all the way down in MD. I also had a look at the 925 level, and these temps are still anchored easily below freezing with the 0 line running nearer to the MD border, the -2 dipping to KAOO, and UNV near the -4 line. This is hour 39.. at precip arrival.

What I found most interesting was at hour 42, the heavier precip moving in actually collapses the 850 back into north central PA getting the 0 line roughly to i'd say northern clearfield or far nothern centre, and sending the +2 line all the way below KAOO and then lifting back up in the Sus Valley (for instance MDT on the +4 line at 850). However at 925, places like UNV never get warmer than about -2 to -4ºC, and MDT is about 0 to -2 the whole event. To put it simply, it still suggests to me that the central counties see more sleet than freezing rain, and the far north central along the ny border is probably mainly snow, with a point where sleet might mix in. I think someone in central along the I-80 corridor somewhere might actually deal with an inch or two of sleet.

Where i'm still most concerned with damaging ice is the Laurels, the higher ridges of the central ridge and valley under I-80, the Susquehanna valley above the turnpike, and the higher parts of the Pocono's. Below the turnpike in places like York and Lancaster, there should be a change to plain rain at some point keeping ice accums while still significant, probably not of the highly damaging variety (>.50 accretion).

What do you and others think of the radar right now? Almost looks like the initial slug is going to be from UNV north, but I suppose there will be more precip developing.

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What do you and others think of the radar right now? Almost looks like the initial slug is going to be from UNV north, but I suppose there will be more precip developing.

the HRRR(which did great the last storm) looks like UNV will see a good amount but more precip will develop ahead and all of PA should see several hours of snow.

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What do you and others think of the radar right now? Almost looks like the initial slug is going to be from UNV north, but I suppose there will be more precip developing.

I've had a look at the simulated radars in the LWX site and it appears that 3/4 models eventually crack UNV and AOO pretty good, with exception of the 12km WRF-NMM (using GFS initial/boundary). That one kinda slots out the middle of PA where one area stays in the southeast and the rest of the main part of the first shot hits the north central. I believe that's the model E-wall uses. Here's the link where you can look at em if you didn't already know: http://www.erh.noaa....localmodels.php

it does look like we're starting to see signs of some precip blossoming across the southern tier, and when that slug out west gets closer we should see things fill in.

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Snowing in Harrisburg, already everything is dusted over (including roads that are traveled fairly regularly). That was quicker than I imagined.

Any chance PennDOT learned from 2007 and doesn't plow the snow? If they don't, traction will be MUCH BETTER given the sleet/zr approaching. Without the snow, the roads are impossible to travel on.

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Hm, this probably isn't a good sign: Snow has completely changed to sleet. Sleeting somewhat moderately.

It's been a snow/sleet mix here from the get-go. In fact mainly sleet.

Its not sleet, its snow pellets and graupel. This is a sign of intense UVVs aloft note the cellular nature of the precipitation right now, its almost convective in nature.

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