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Pittsburgh, PA Thread: Winter '14-'15


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New thread and hopefully a new pattern soon. Just one 10+ storm probably would satisfy all of us snow weenies

 

That's all I really want. Most of the winter can be mild for all I care. Just give me one or two big ones at some point to enjoy. I'm not a big fan of frigid cold and nuisance amounts of snow, like we had a lot of last winter, but that's just me.

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That's how it usually works around here. lol

lol, this is true. At east we got a couple inches from the clipper so it wasn't totally wasted cold.

seriously....a very quiet stretch of weather ahead.....

Yeah, looks like at least 4-5 days of dry weather coming up. Hopefully by this weekend we will start to see something showing up for next week both in terms of a possible storm and the models getting a handle on how the pattern reload looks.

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I think our next snow chances won't show up until the last week in January when it seems the pattern will finally be more favorable.  It won't be perfect by any means; I was trying to determine if January or February is a better snow month for PGH.  I was looking for specific data - daily snowfall maximum records for each day in each month.  Anyone know where to find it? 

 

I see January has better overall maximums compared to February: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/pbz/tsnow.htm (5 days of >11" of snow compared to 1).  That said, monthly record totals seem to be about even, so it might be a wash overall.  I'd like to plot the data if anyone knows where to get it.

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I think our next snow chances won't show up until the last week in January when it seems the pattern will finally be more favorable.  It won't be perfect by any means; I was trying to determine if January or February is a better snow month for PGH.  I was looking for specific data - daily snowfall maximum records for each day in each month.  Anyone know where to find it? 

 

I see January has better overall maximums compared to February: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/pbz/tsnow.htm (5 days of >11" of snow compared to 1).  That said, monthly record totals seem to be about even, so it might be a wash overall.  I'd like to plot the data if anyone knows where to get it.

Go to http://www.weather.gov/pbz/pit_normals , select a month, and then read in the "MXSN" column.

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Go to http://www.weather.gov/pbz/pit_normals , select a month, and then read in the "MXSN" column.

 

Thanks so much for that!

 

Finished the box and whiskers plot as a means to help visualize which month may have the best overall snow potential.  One caveat, at least: I finished the chart in Excel which doesn't naturally create box and whisker plots.  You have to manipulate a bar graph, that's why it looks a bit off, but it should stand nonetheless.

 

YkqVX8o.png

 

What we see is January appears to be the best overall month for potential snows; as such, unfortunately, we're going to waste some of that potential with a dull pattern here.  Now the good news is, March maintains a good bit of potential itself (more or less the same amount of potential as December).

 

One note: February's maximum looks low, but that's largely because the 2010 storm is recorded over two days instead of one.  Really February's maximum could be 21.1" instead, but that's okay.  February itself doesn't lag that far behind January.

 

Some of the more interesting dates: there's never been a decent snowstorm on January 5th, 10th, or February 2nd.

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Well the new GFS in its operational state delivers a fantasy snow storm for late next week. This will be our Apps runner, its just a little east for the time being. :)

gfs_mslp_pcpn_frzn_us_37.png

Here is the Canadian at the same time next Friday. A lake cutter. Maybe we can get them to come together for a big storm.

It looks like there will be a storm either way but who know which way it will go.

 

gem_mslp_pcpn_frzn_us_36.png

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Here's an interesting read about the potential storm between the 21st and 25th: http://theweathercentre.blogspot.com/2015/01/january-21-25-potentially-significant.html

 

This was pulled from another forum.  I don't know the forecaster or if this method of prediction is reliable, but it is an interesting read anyway.  I guess we'll see how it pans out; if nothing else, we may have something to track for once.  Miller A systems can, of course, produce quite well around here with favorable tracks (1996, 2003, 2010).

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A week out. We have seen a storm that was supposed to drop 3-5 two days before and pffft we didn't get an inch. So anything is on the table at this point. We know one thing and that there won't be a lack of cold air. If the pattern gets active then we are bound to run into something. There is no way we could be fringed multiple times in a row.

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Next Friday storm is Pfttt!!!! Gone!

Storm is still there, just pretty far east on the models that have it. Seems pretty good agreement there will be some sort of storm, but the track is anyone's guess. Canadian looks like it misses the phase, GFS phases later, and Euro is a mess of short waves in the flow that eventually come together and crush DC northward. Pretty much every option is on the table I'd say at this range.

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A week out. We have seen a storm that was supposed to drop 3-5 two days before and pffft we didn't get an inch. So anything is on the table at this point. We know one thing and that there won't be a lack of cold air. If the pattern gets active then we are bound to run into something. There is no way we could be fringed multiple times in a row.

 

Storm is still there, just pretty far east on the models that have it. Seems pretty good agreement there will be some sort of storm, but the track is anyone's guess. Canadian looks like it misses the phase, GFS phases later, and Euro is a mess of short waves in the flow that eventually come together and crush DC northward. Pretty much every option is on the table I'd say at this range.

We posted at almost the same time, lol safe to say we agree on the "everything on the table view".

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Great minds think alike. Anyway, it looks like the Euro Ensembles show every single possible scenerio. There are GLCs, Southern sliders, direct hits, coastal huggers. We honestly won't know what will be the outcome until atleast early/mid next week. Things are looking up and hopefully we can cash in something. Expectations are low at this point so I think a solid warning event would get this board rocking.

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But hes not done yet. The ensemble mean for the temperatures in the 10-15 day are really cold but look at the control run. This would give last year a run for its money. Coming soon "The Return of the Polar Vortex". Sounds like a cheesy sci fi movie but thats what could occur.

F70A2D51-C14E-4C05-A6E3-CD00A3D1A7B0_zps

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Great minds think alike. Anyway, it looks like the Euro Ensembles show every single possible scenerio. There are GLCs, Southern sliders, direct hits, coastal huggers. We honestly won't know what will be the outcome until atleast early/mid next week. Things are looking up and hopefully we can cash in something. Expectations are low at this point so I think a solid warning event would get this board rocking.

Yeah, I don't have access to the Euro ensembles but hearing the mean track is more of a miller B storm which is much better than a miss OTS. Meanwhile, the 18z GFS is showing this for a clipper on Wednesday:

 

gfs_mslp_pcpn_frzn_us_24.png

 

At the very least the upcoming pattern looks to have storm chances, so we should have something to track at the very least and hopefully we get a nice snowfall.

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It's hard to tell at 24 hour intervals, but the 12z Euro didn't look too bad for next weekend. I know, I know... eight days away, but it gives me something to look forward to every twelve hours.

one thing I notice on the euro is the systems behind the coastal. I just have a feeling that those will be the key. Usually those systems like to kick these systems further east.
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I know that we haven't received very much snow over this winter but I know that we have had less than 7.5 inches. I'm watching WPXI today and they said that we normally have received 17.5 inches but only have 7.5 thus far.

At the end of December we had only .8 inches for from the begining of November so when did the other 6.7 inches fall? There hasn't been one storm that I measured that gave us more than 2 inches and honestly, that was the only real measurable snow that I could calculate. I live near the NWS so are they taking their measurements from somewhere else I don't know. Interested to see if anybody else can say they have measured at least 7.5 inches for the year.

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I know that we haven't received very much snow over this winter but I know that we have had less than 7.5 inches. I'm watching WPXI today and they said that we normally have received 17.5 inches but only have 7.5 thus far.

At the end of December we had only .8 inches for from the begining of November so when did the other 6.7 inches fall? There hasn't been one storm that I measured that gave us more than 2 inches and honestly, that was the only real measurable snow that I could calculate. I live near the NWS so are they taking their measurements from somewhere else I don't know. Interested to see if anybody else can say they have measured at least 7.5 inches for the year.

 

I haven't seen 7.5 inches. That's for sure. Maybe 3 or 4 inches? And that seems generous.

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