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Central PA Late Spring 2012


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Ended up with a bit over an inch in central Lancaster county. While rain was falling almost nonstop from early Sunday morning until early today, it was mostly drizzle, with the highest rate being 0.25" per hour, and only spiking that high periodically.

The heaviest rain fell Saturday night, when a band of t-storms moved through, but even then, it was only light-moderate rain.

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Gonna take the drive up to the top of Wopsy west of Altoona to see what the situation looks like up there. At least it seems the Laurels are going to get about as advertised with this system. Also heard from my dad who took a drive on the mountain road on Tussey mtn that there was a few inches up there. Without that extra oomph we needed from the very dynamic solutions we saw up until.. well 0z last night, this turned into a purely elevational deal. We still have a nice storm, and one that is hanging a pretty decent deform band on the west central. The storm ending up more progressive prevented the classic csi banding that with the right placement would have gotten decent snows to lower locations east (or west) of the Alleghenies. Even the actual downtown area of Johnstown doesn't sound like it has much on the ground according to the WJAC article:

Another factor that's unusual about the snowstorm is not all areas are getting the same amounts of snow due to elevation.

Some towns reported inches of snow, while others reported no accumulation. In Johnstown, snow covered the top of the Incline, while the bottom was lush and green.

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like normal, i question the reports on precip from Harrisburg. Yesterday it said Precip for Saturday was 0.0" wtf? It rained from about 2pm at least until i went to bed at midnight. it varied in intensity from complete downpour to mist. Now its says yesterdays precip was only .59" lol.

I looked at the climate reports from mdt and they say Sat 4/21 0.35 and Sun 1.01 Millersville has Sat 0.44 and Sun 1.37 . I live smack between the two and my wx sta has strorm totals starting 4/21 till now 2.07. Not sure what u were looking at or if they corrected it since then. That line Sat hit you good so i'm sure you got more Sat but till it got here it was just light to moderate for several minutes.

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here is a video from the drive down from the top to the bottom of rockton mtn.

its a little shaky at the top due to the bad road (it does get better once we hit paved road) but the video was shot by my 11 yr old son so its a little low in the seat as well-lol...but he tried :)

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Here's a few of mine I snapped on my drive. I took them at about 430 or so.

From the top of Wopsy mountain (several miles west of Altoona)

post-1507-0-42596600-1335221148.jpg

post-1507-0-46014100-1335221174.jpg

The variations of snowfall within a short distance was pretty impressive, even up in the Laurels. The top of Wopsy, which is one of the leading ridges of the Allegheny front on the east sticks up about 2500 feet in elevation. There was easily about 6-10 inches on that stretch, with even some minor drifting in spots around buildings and open areas. I drove the rest of that road to near Ashville and picked up PA 53/253 north for awhile which runs at about 1600'. That stretch only had about 2 or 3 inches with everything on trees melted off. Fortunately, it seemed that the high snow amounts around here fell above the level where leaves really started to come out. There was only a fairly thin elevation range where somewhat heavy snow and blooming trees coexisted (roughly 1600-2000ft) and i saw some big limbs snapped here and there. You had to be above about 1300-1400ft in this area to start seeing anything on the ground going west up into the Laurels.

This last pic was back in Bellwood looking up at Brush Mountain east of town (left - right is north to south).

post-1507-0-15572100-1335221237.jpg

The whitened part of that ridge is at and above 2000 feet. It is also an area I started seeing that particular part of the ridge and further south show up as lower correlation coefficient values on the dual pol radar.

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here is a video from the drive down from the top to the bottom of rockton mtn.

its a little shaky at the top due to the bad road (it does get better once we hit paved road) but the video was shot by my 11 yr old son so its a little low in the seat as well-lol...but he tried :)

Great pics and video!

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close to a foot of snow on rockton mtn in the grassy areas (i got anywhere from 9 to over 12" in grassy spots)...still light/mod snow up there.

these pics were just taken around 5pm.

Awesome and beautiful pictures. I'm quite jealous. Thanks for sharing those!

Same goes for everyone that went out and took pics. Gotta love snow chasing.

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Would be interesting to see the tops on Mt. Nittany/Tussey compared to downtown State College today. I would have to think those spots approach or reach warning snow amounts with the banding. The storm is going to be too progressive to really put down a lot of snow as it looked like yesterday and the day before, but any snow on April 23rd is very impressive. The tree damage would have been prolific as well. I was in town for the Blue/White game and saw all the leafed out trees. Many of them would have been destroyed if 4-8" of snow fell on them.

Took a quick trip to the top of Tussey. 5-6" with some decent tree damage in spots. Will post pics when I get home later tonight.

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Lol unreal, CTP disco

RECENTLY RECEIVED A SPOTTER REPORT FROM ONE OF OUR HIGHEST LOCATIONS /LAUREL SUMMIT AT 2730 FT MSL/ IN NORTHWEST SOMERSET CTY...AND THE SNOWFALL TOTAL IS NOW UP TO 23.2 INCHES WITH 18 INCHES OF HEAVY SNOW ON THE GROUND. SUPPLEMENTED THIS REPORT BY SPEAKING WITH SEVEN SPRINGS SKI RESORT PERSONNEL THAT HAD 18 INCHES BURYING THE DECK OF THE HOTEL/LODGE. THE SKI AREA BASE IS ON THE SAME RIDGE ABOUT 10-12 MILES TO THE SOUTHWEST - WITH THE BASE OF THE SLOPES AROUND 2200 FT MSL.

Just crazy what elevation and a deform shield/upsloping combo can do on those ridges. Imagine if we would've had the highly organized deform shield and banding.

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Awesome pictures and video! Thanks for posting them. :thumbsup:

Very impressive total for Laurel Summit!

thanks...its sucks that my place is green while 8 miles(i checked it on my last trip) away looks like that.

i wish i had the money i would have a house up there!!

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Lol unreal, CTP disco

Just crazy what elevation and a deform shield/upsloping combo can do on those ridges. Imagine if we would've had the highly organized deform shield and banding.

Yeah-too bad the more intense dynamics didn't really work out. It was certainly still a major event for the western Laurels/Allegheny slopes. Hard to imagine how crazy the 4/28/1928 storm had to have been to drop a foot and a half of snow in downtown State College, but that would have been devastating if it happened today.

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Lol...I just saw that. Completely absurd. What a weird winter/spring.

Would you say that this has been one of the most anomalous periods of weather, I mean March and April in general, that you have seen?

Yeah, I would probably agree. We have seen May-like temperatures for a majority of March, and Feb-like winter storms in late April. Certainly not your average Spring at least that I've experienced.

On another note, it looks like that next system has warm air aloft above 850mb so its not snow right along the 0 line at 850. Further north though it looks like snow...

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Yeah, I would probably agree. We have seen May-like temperatures for a majority of March, and Feb-like winter storms in late April. Certainly not your average Spring at least that I've experienced.

On another note, it looks like that next system has warm air aloft above 850mb so its not snow right along the 0 line at 850. Further north though it looks like snow...

Looks sleety. And good Lord, what a freaking cold run of the GFS and last night's Euro for this weekend/early next week. Very Novemberish.

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Forecasters back here in the western Lakes are discussing the possibility of snow Friday night/Saturday closely. GFS and EURO support a somewhat thin stripe of snow heading across the lower lakes in central PA's direction! I would think some people out east would have a good chance at more snow given that elevations are higher then anything around here overall!

Twisterdata.com snowfall map: http://www.twisterda...e&archive=false

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State College 12z NAM:

Seeing how it's the NAM by itself in its latest period, I'd bet money this will change.

120428/1600Z 76 19003KT 32.3F SNOW 17:1| 0.7|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.043 17:1| 0.7|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.04 100| 0| 0

120428/1700Z 77 VRB01KT 32.4F SNOW 15:1| 2.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.139 15:1| 2.8|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.18 90| 0| 10

120428/1800Z 78 VRB01KT 32.4F SNOW 13:1| 1.4|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.114 14:1| 4.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.30 90| 0| 10

----------------------------------------------+----++-----+-------------++--------------++-------------++-----------+---+---

120428/1900Z 79 VRB02KT 32.3F SNOW 12:1| 1.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.111 14:1| 5.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.41 100| 0| 0

120428/2000Z 80 VRB01KT 32.3F SNOW 10:1| 0.6|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.063 13:1| 6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.47 100| 0| 0

120428/2100Z 81 VRB01KT 32.8F RASN 0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.021 13:1| 6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.49 86| 0| 14

120428/2200Z 82 VRB02KT 32.8F RASN 0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.030 13:1| 6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.52 84| 0| 16

120428/2300Z 83 VRB02KT 32.6F RASN 0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.027 13:1| 6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.55 88| 0| 12

120429/0000Z 84 26004KT 32.6F RASN 0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.004 13:1| 6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.55 88| 0| 12

============================================================================================================================

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