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Central PA Late Spring 2012


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Yeah. Dark as hell over Blue Mountain. Poured here for 60 secs and now nothing.

nice looking cell with a decent hail threat. I'm hoping the MCS in western PA makes it over the appalachians, but I know it's probably not going to.

1" hail reported in butler, and numerous reports of fallen trees from that system.

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Getting ready for the arrival of the severe line of tsrws. Radar looks amazing all orange and red. The wording of the warning from NWS sounds quite ominous.....gusts likely to 70mph with extensive and continuous cloud-to-ground lightning. Brace yourselves...

Well it arrived and is pouring out there now but no severe wind gusts, nor hail, nor virtually any lightning! Looks like good 'ol Blue Mountain is devouring the ferocity of the storms right by me. Zak should be doing better right now.

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Well it arrived and is pouring out there now but no severe wind gusts, nor hail, nor virtually any lightning! Looks like good 'ol Blue Mountain is devouring the ferocity of the storms right by me. Zak should be doing better right now.

Significant damage to your southwest near Chambersburg.... 87 mph measured gust with a report of a roof blown off a building.

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Last night's storm was relatively unimpressive here in Bellefonte. A few decent gusts and brief heavy rain followed by an hour or more of light to moderate stratiform rain with occasional thunder. I was out of town for a family GTG Saturday, but it looks like we got hit pretty hard here in the afternoon. Lots of leaf litter and small branches scattered around, along with few larger limbs. Mud and gravel all over the place from the torrential rains. At our cabin in Snyder County we must have had at least 2" of rain Saturday afternoon in just over an hour, washed down the dirt road pretty badly.

I'm looking forward to another hot and humid day today, hoping for another storm this afternoon.

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Still on generator power here this afternoon. And I think rumor has it our road isn't going to get fixed until tomorrow. At least the cable/phone has been restored, so i can use my internet. What a storm yesterday, I was not in Bellwood when it happened as me and my cousin went down to a friends farm to do some shooting. If you use Wunderground at all it is actually this station. The guys weather station (Davis Vue) measured a 67mph wind gust as the storm went through and it was one of the better storms i've ever seen around here. I was caught flat footed by not taking my laptop or anything to take a video. Then I came back into Bellwood and it was really a mess with multiple trees and power lines down.

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Power has been restored. Took a walk in the woods behind our house and found a couple trees that got sheared in half. Now to attempt to dig up some radar data of what the hell went through here yesterday. I'm really mad I didn't have a device that could take video with me yesterday, cuz I would've had some epic footage of this line roaring through.

Some pics:

This first one was where I was at when the storms hit, which is near the Blair/Huntingdon line on Route 22. Had to clear a tree to get out.

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Next two are in and around Bellwood, first pic is one of the culprits for our 24 hour power outage (other end of our road had lines down as well. Second one was one I found shared on my Facebook from around the school. This type of tree damage was pretty widespread around town.

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(No the cows not real and the storm didn't put it there..haha.)

This last one I just discovered on my F-book (another shared image). Nice debatable picture, poster said this was on the Saxton, PA side of Henrietta Mountain...so in other words this is far southeastern Blair county looking east over the ridge to the far NW portion of Bedford and/or far SW Huntingdon county. I would say yes this was probably a quick spinup along the edge of the line. Would really like to see some velocity data for that area and the Bellwood area as well as the edge of the line was pressing in.

post-1507-0-78253500-1338246930_thumb.jp

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Great pics MAG! lol that complex of storms comletely missed me, so I wasn't able to witness the fury. I have only gotten .18" in the last 17 days, I'm really hoping we can get some rain with this next batch tomorrow, and if not, we might be in trouble for a little while. My grandparents spring well water is running low, very noticible drop in water pressure.

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Great pics MAG! lol that complex of storms comletely missed me, so I wasn't able to witness the fury. I have only gotten .18" in the last 17 days, I'm really hoping we can get some rain with this next batch tomorrow, and if not, we might be in trouble for a little while. My grandparents spring well water is running low, very noticible drop in water pressure.

Hopefully we can get something for ya tomorrow. Looks like a pretty good chance you should be able to get some kind of half decent rainfall. Tuesday was also technically the day that had been looked at more for any potential severe as SPC has had us in a slight risk, and probably will continue to do so when they update soon. Looks like a more typical type threat for C-PA, with probably some decent cells firing ahead of a main line associated with the front. Could be a chance for some rainfall at the end of the week as well.

About the Sunday event, I downloaded the radar data off of the ncdc website and was able to successfully load it into GR2Analyst. Heavily scrutinized the area that possible tornado pic had come from..but couldn't come up with any definitive support from velocity products. Here is the storm relative velocity image as Bellwood was getting victimized. Was hard to set a storm motion since the line was expanding outwards. For instance up towards State College a slower and more easterly trajectory was needed. I set the storm motion for this segment of the squall line for 160 (SE)@45knots for this portion of the squall line. This frame and the next frame had a pretty consistent 45-55knots associated with the gust front.

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After looking at all the stuff I missed while I had been away from the computer when the line blew up and of course when I lost power for 24 hours I must say that this is one of the best examples of a full strength MCS i've seen anytime recently for the middle of the state. Typically of course, we watch these lines get to about Pittsburgh or so and lose alot of punch once it gets off the Laurels. In this case, the MCS blew up in west central PA and made its full stride southeast. I really hadn't anticipated much of a threat beyond heavy rain and perhaps a couple instances of wind and hail with some pop up storms, and neither did CTP or SPC, who only had us in a general thunderstorm risk area. On the SPC mesoanalysis the MCS maintenance and derecho composite parameters weren't high at all, lending to a lack of bulk/0-6km shear and downdraft CAPE's that weren't too terribly high. What we did have were high MUCAPE and low level lapses.. which helped translate the very high winds to the surface. There was plenty of moisture (high PWATs) and heat to work with, and the atmosphere managed to make do and produce a very rapid and hard hitting line of storms.

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Pretty strong wording from the SPC who raised hail and wind probabilities to 30% for much of the area in the mountains and east.

1300 outlook snippet:

AN EXPANSIVE PRE-FRONTAL BAND OF TSTMS IS ONGOING AS OF 12Z FROM

SWRN ONTARIO/LAKE ERIE SWWD INTO NRN KY...LIKELY FORCED BY THE

LEADING EDGE OF STRONGER HEIGHT FALLS ASSOCIATED WITH UPPER SYSTEM

MOVING THROUGH THE GREAT LAKES. BASED ON SATELLITE

IMAGERY...DOWNSTREAM AIR MASS ACROSS NY/PA SHOULD EXPERIENCE STRONG

DAYTIME HEATING. WHEN COUPLED WITH DEWPOINTS IN THE 60S AND

MIDLEVEL LAPSE RATES OF AROUND 7 C/KM...ENVIRONMENT WILL BECOME

MODERATE-STRONGLY UNSTABLE WITH MLCAPE VALUES INCREASING TO

2000-3000 J/KG. THIS DESTABILIZATION ALONG WITH THE EWD PROGRESSION

OF UPPER TROUGH WILL SUPPORT A MARKED INCREASE IN STORM VIGOR AND

COVERAGE BY EARLY AFTERNOON ALONG COLD FRONT AND/OR LEADING EDGE OF

COLD POOL ASSOCIATED WITH THE ONGOING STORMS.

THE STRONGEST MID- AND HIGH-LEVEL WIND FIELD ASSOCIATED WITH THE

TROUGH IS FORECAST TO LAG THE WARM SECTOR TO THE W...LIMITING

DEEP-LAYER SHEAR MAGNITUDES TO GENERALLY 30-40 KT. EXPECT THE

STRONG INSTABILITY TO COMPENSATE WITH ENVIRONMENT BECOMING

SUPPORTIVE OF MULTIPLE ORGANIZED STORM MODES...INCLUDING BOWING LINE

SEGMENTS AND SUPERCELLS WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR CORRIDORS OF WIND

DAMAGE AND SWATHS OF LARGE HAIL. THE GREATEST RISK FOR A TORNADO OR

TWO WILL EXIST ALONG WARM FRONT OVER NEW ENGLAND WHERE LOW-LEVEL

SHEAR WILL BE ENHANCED.

It is already feeling like a stormy day ahead with readings like 77/66 at 9am!

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MAG - Saturday/Sunday surprised the hell out of me. I wasn't expecting anything like that.

Been keeping track of rain fall and IMBY, we are at 6.24 for the month. Might be able to swing 7"...this is reminds me of last year.

What do you think about today's severe chances?

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Svr Watch up for the western half of PA. No doubt expect a new watch issued later for the other half... best threat so far this season. Although shear is not overly impressive, 0-6km shear around 30 knots is enough with plenty of instability to compensate. The storms already firing (with warnings already by 10:30am) to the west will probably develop into a southwest to northeast oriented line and propagate east through the state.... bowing out in places. Wet bulb zero level around 10k ft will likely aid in a decent hail threat as well.

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It was hot as balls last weekend in Columbus. Holy crap it sucked.

Looks like Harrisburg got some rain when I was away, good for the plants and flowers. :)

lol, a co-worker of mine was talking about this saying yesterday at a barbeque. She's from Boston area, and never heard it. She loves it, actually. I think it's a total central PA thing but could be wrong.

Svr Watch up for the western half of PA. Not doubt expect a new watch issued later for the other half... best threat for far this season. Although shear is not overly impressive, 0-6km shear around 30 knots is enough with plenty of instability to compensate. The storms already firing (with warnings already by 10:30am) to the west will probably develop into a southwest to northeast oriented line and propagate east through the state.... bowing out in places. Wet bulb zero level around 10k ft will likely aid in a decent hail threat as well.

That is remarkable. Not to mention all the sun so destablization isn't an issue.

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