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Pittsburgh/Western PA Banter & Complaint Thread


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8 minutes ago, CoraopolisWx said:

Looks like we need another southern trend for Friday night. SMH

On the GFS yeah. The others have suppressed garbage sliding harmlessly south. Unless you count the 0z ICON. It showed a direct hit of warning type snow. Point being there’s still hope for a middle ground solution where it snows here, but I’m just tired of watching models with no results.

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3 hours ago, TimB said:

And if we’re looking to long-term snow averages at the end of the decade, we’ll already be replacing the 72.1 of 1992-93 with the 17.6 of 2022-23, and now we might be replacing the 76.8 of 1993-94 with like 12-15” in 2023-24. So that’s like a 4” drop in the calculated normals in and of itself, even if the rest of the decade is similar to its 90s counterparts.

I think we just need to come to grips with the fact that our location downwind of the Great Lakes would suggest we will be among the fastest warming winter climates on the globe. In winters past, the Great Lakes would get significant ice cover and allow unmodified arctic air to penetrate into the area. Now, they are massive, wide-open heat sinks all year long, taking in the heat of summertime and slowly dissipating that heat all winter long.

Under the traditional Koppen climate classification, a subtropical climate was having a mean temperature of -3C or warmer in the coldest season. They didn't like this system for North America, and so it was modified to 0C or warmer.  But even under this system, the last 5 years, the coldest mean is 31.8F in January (or basically 0C). Certainly, downtown, the lower elevations and places further south in the metropolitan areas have seen 5 years pass with all months above freezing. 

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9 hours ago, TimB said:

And if we’re looking to long-term snow averages at the end of the decade, we’ll already be replacing the 72.1 of 1992-93 with the 17.6 of 2022-23, and now we might be replacing the 76.8 of 1993-94 with like 12-15” in 2023-24. So that’s like a 4” drop in the calculated normals in and of itself, even if the rest of the decade is similar to its 90s counterparts.

This is assuming we don't have any winters with 60"+ in the coming years, and there is no way of knowing that.  Next year could be the snowiest ever.  It's always possible.

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We have a long way to go if we have any hope of getting out of the worst 20 or even 10 snowfall seasons. Ignoring the fact that 14 of these top 20 seasons were observed at a different site, we’re looking at 3 of the 5 worst seasons at PIT occurring in the past 5 years unless we get another 10” of snow between now and the end of the season. Still need 5” to even prevent this from being the worst in modern history.EA083BF7-A82D-48FA-8600-DDB1FB2B11A5.jpeg.0ff3abc63dfef6c8e90253721c51717f.jpeg

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What an epic fail, both short-term and long-term on the models. What once looked like an epic pattern has now just turned to absolute c***. It's gonna take basically a miracle at this point for us to even come close to our seasonal average. All the epic blocking that was showing up on the models has disappeared. Now it looks like even Even in February that we might warm up at the end of the month.

We were supposed to be going into the mjo 8,1,2 And now we don't even know if that's gonna come to fruition.

At this point we're just chasing A 2018 style storm. I mean, it is what it is. We're running out of time, long-range doesn't look good and even when it does, it just breaks down  Good thing I enjoy warm weather and actually take advantage of it.

Rant over

 

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

What an epic fail, both short-term and long-term on the models. What once looked like an epic pattern has now just turned to absolute c***. It's gonna take basically a miracle at this point for us to even come close to our seasonal average. All the epic blocking that was showing up on the models has disappeared. Now it looks like even Even in February that we might warm up at the end of the month.

We were supposed to be going into the mjo 8,1,2 And now we don't even know if that's gonna come to fruition.

At this point we're just chasing A 2018 style storm. I mean, it is what it is. We're running out of time, long-range doesn't look good and even when it does, it just breaks down  Good thing I enjoy warm weather and actually take advantage of it.

Rant over

 

 

 

 

I'm sorta torn right now between just hoping for a warm early spring and set a top 5 futility season record, or root for a big fluke event. My issue is if it snows again I'll have to start all over in the stages of grief (If you can call it that?) when I feel like now I'm almost to the acceptance stage and ready to move on.

Tracking the good looks that were supposed to be setting in right now for almost a month only to have it fall apart is a real gut punch. As much as I enjoy that part of it, eventually I need some ROI to feel like it was worth it. That week in Jan was great, but if thats all she wrote its really been an awful winter. My bar was its gotta be better than last year, whelp maybe not. :(

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1 minute ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

I'm sorta torn right now between just hoping for a warm early spring and set a top 5 futility season record, or root for a big fluke event. My issue is if it snows again I'll have to start all over in the stages of grief (If you can call it that?) when I feel like now I'm almost to the acceptance stage and ready to move on.

Tracking the good looks that were supposed to be setting in right now for almost a month only to have it fall apart is a real gut punch. As much as I enjoy that part of it, eventually I need some ROI to feel like it was worth it. That week in Jan was great, but if thats all she wrote its really been an awful winter. My bar was its gotta be better than last year, whelp maybe not. :(

And that’s what it boils down to. A top 5 futility season would be a lot easier to stomach if we didn’t have something eerily similar last year, in a totally different ENSO base state. Could I be less invested in this hobby? Of course, we all could. But even if I weren’t obsessively watching models or looking at stats showing historic winter warmth or lack of snow, these seasons have been bad enough that even the casuals have to be aware that these past two winters have been epically bad.

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On 2/13/2024 at 6:24 PM, Ahoff said:

This is assuming we don't have any winters with 60"+ in the coming years, and there is no way of knowing that.  Next year could be the snowiest ever.  It's always possible.

That’s fine, we still have 95-96 to replace in the normals.

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On 2/14/2024 at 9:39 AM, TimB said:

We have a long way to go if we have any hope of getting out of the worst 20 or even 10 snowfall seasons. Ignoring the fact that 14 of these top 20 seasons were observed at a different site, we’re looking at 3 of the 5 worst seasons at PIT occurring in the past 5 years unless we get another 10” of snow between now and the end of the season. Still need 5” to even prevent this from being the worst in modern history.EA083BF7-A82D-48FA-8600-DDB1FB2B11A5.jpeg.0ff3abc63dfef6c8e90253721c51717f.jpeg

One correction to that list. Even ignoring any considerations of the site location, methodology and some data irregularities in the database, the 1879-1880 figure is based on incomplete data [as records don't begin until 1880]. Last winter was #8 on this list among years with sufficient data.

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7 minutes ago, PghPirates27 said:

Gonna get screwed again up here. Missed the heavy band by 30 miles last storm, gonna miss this on by 30-50 miles again. 

Yeah. South hills is going to do ok but those of us up north are looking not great. I’ll probably get like 2 inches but I can see south hills getting a good 4-6 with the way the band is set up. 

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1 hour ago, MikeB_01 said:

No cool air in sight, i'm done wishcasting snow. Bring on the Spring! :sun:

I'm always kinda torn with these types of winters. One part wants to delay Spring because it might be another 9 months before any winter weather returns.

The other side is just done with these snow drought winters, and couldn't care less if it ends. :(

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1 hour ago, PghPirates27 said:

What was the final tally for snowfall 2023-2024 and where did that end up ranking?

Looks like 6th least among complete seasons, officially. YMMV. 1879-1880 only includes snowfall records from January onwards. 

image.png.c28697c82737fab630a572690fa9b426.png

Also, the least snowiest on record at Pittsburgh International Airport, and least snowiest overall in the threaded record since the winter of 1932-1933 (when official observations were still taken downtown). That period (1931-32 & 1932-33) is also the only analog for back-to-back futility like the last two winters.

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