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Central PA & the fringes - January 2015 Part III


WmsptWx

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Winter is long from over folks. No reason to panic. This storm threat was for freezing rain for the past 3 or 4 days. 

 

Next snow threat is Thursday, then Sunday, and then next week Tuesday-Wednesday potential overrruner. Meanwhile all models are cold. Great pattern.

 

I was never really enamored with this weekend event when models shifted that baroclinic zone to the north of the area prior to it. Best precip and forcing was always going to be at and north of that boundary. Where we had our chance was if it pressed south early enough during this last wave to allow available precip to change to snow and accumulate. Really the only model that offered that swath of snow through the middle and east central part of the state was the Euro. Models like the GFS and NAM always kept any snow in the far NE of PA a couple days leading up to the storm. I did think the north had a shot of something.. but the true boundary of arctic air near the state line was too slow to press into the state.  Just didn't work out in a setup that really didn't particularly favor PA to begin with. 

 

 

Thursday is an SNE storm so scratch that one off the list right now. Not feeling the weekend either...that has the makings of a 95 bomb and a fringejob here.

 

In any event, things are icing up here with FZDZ.

 

 

Both the Thursday and weekend northern stream waves will likely have swaths of snow running through PA to some degree. As for being affected by bombing off the coast Thursday, yea probably not... we just aren't positioned right being on the front side of the trough. We'll get the initial wave but the bombing out will favor eastern New England... just the reality of the situation. I think the Saturday wave has more potential snow wise, it puts a very dynamic sub 510 500mb low over us on the GFS/Euro. Could be a feisty clipper with a decent snow swath and good ratios. Not gonna touch the event after that yet.. its still there though. 

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More like a NYC and SNE bomb. I'm not quite confident that Philly, Baltimore, and DC will get in on that one.

Rayno says it could be another NE bomb alright.  Possibly a blizzard.  You have got to be freakin kidding me.  We can barely muster an inch and New Eng just keeps getting pounded.  I wonder how many snow lovers up there are getting sick of it now?

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Didn't know it was snowing. Surfaces all covered, even main roads.

When I came home from work in Mechanicsburg back around 7:00 the precip had changed to snow grains which accumulated all over my car.  I checked to see if it was sleet, but they looked like tiny white pellets of fertilizer.  That was the transition over to snow on my way home to Carlisle.  When I arrived home around 7:30 it was snowing and beginning to stick everywhere with maybe 0.1" of accumulation.  I didn't think much about it until a few minutes ago when I thought I would check out back on my board and to my amazement, big fat flakes were falling and I had accumulated a whole inch of snow!  Yay snow...a whole inch....woohoo.

 

Okay, I was truly surprised since the radar didn't look that dramatic at the time.  Now, everything is white again and looks nice.  Temp down to 28.4 degrees.

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It's been snowing light but steady in Marysville for about the 3 hours.

All surfaces covered and have to be ballpark of 1 inch thus far. Hopefully MDT can produce a few tenths of an inch to get us over the 18 inch mark for the season and keep us near normal for the season to date. With all of the storms over the last few weeks that have underperformed, it's hard to believe that we still are still on pace for average climo snow.

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Dangit. After all this back talk, I just fell outside walking our bulldog and tweaked that spot that's been bugging me for a year. Light snow and a dusting in York.

Ouch. Take care of yourself and watch those steps out there. It's pretty nasty. Heating pad and window watching for me tonight. I'm not stepping foot out that door with the shape I'm in.

Nice call Mag. Eric and I were talking about this happening earlier this afternoon. Good eye. Love when meteorology comes together like this.

Light snow 25/24 at the Ville.

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Dangit. After all this back talk, I just fell outside walking our bulldog and tweaked that spot that's been bugging me for a year. Light snow and a dusting in York

ice it tonight and hot showers later. hot bath if you can get in and more importantly out.  motrirn for the pain. if it doesn't get better get it checked.

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GFS continues to bring the house behind that weekend clipper. Whole state under 492 thickness at hour 132. 850 temps are less than -30ºC in portions of western PA and below -25ºC elsewhere in the state. We had a couple shots of that magnitude last winter but I believe they were in January. That might be getting toward record level considering mid Feb climo is back on the upswing temp-wise. 

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GFS continues to bring the house behind that weekend clipper. Whole state under 492 thickness at hour 132. 850 temps are less than -30ºC in portions of western PA and below -25ºC elsewhere in the state. We had a couple shots of that magnitude last winter but I believe they were in January. That might be getting toward record level considering mid Feb climo is back on the upswing temp-wise. 

 

The 00z Euro is not as cold, only getting 850 mb temperatures down to -26C in the NW part of the state by 18z Sunday. I suspect (and hope) the GFS will back off on those sub -30C temperatures as we get closer to Sunday. Friday's forecast from a few days ago initially looked like it would a similar magnitude of cold; now the models are suggests 850 mb temperatures will be between -20 and -22C.

 

I also think we should still watch the potential clipper/re-developer this weekend. There's a decent signal on guidance for an inverted trough to develop from the decaying primary low and intensifying secondary low. Those features will not be completely resolved spatially by the global models and thus QPF will be under-forecast. Also, snow growth and detailed crystal habit collection efficiencies in aggregation are poorly treated in operational model physics. A situation with solid lift in the dendritic growth zone can therefore lead to negative biases in model QPF as well.

 

Of course, this being a mesoscale feature with a fair amount of spread in the ensemble guidance, confidence should still be pretty low for this scenario.

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The 00z Euro is not as cold, only getting 850 mb temperatures down to -26C in the NW part of the state by 18z Sunday. I suspect (and hope) the GFS will back off on those sub -30C temperatures as we get closer to Sunday. Friday's forecast from a few days ago initially looked like it would a similar magnitude of cold; now the models are suggests 850 mb temperatures will be between -20 and -22C.

 

I also think we should still watch the potential clipper/re-developer this weekend. There's a decent signal on guidance for an inverted trough to develop from the decaying primary low and intensifying secondary low. Those features will not be completely resolved spatially by the global models and thus QPF will be under-forecast. Also, snow growth and detailed crystal habit collection efficiencies in aggregation are poorly treated in operational model physics. A situation with solid lift in the dendritic growth zone can therefore lead to negative biases in model QPF as well.

 

Of course, this being a mesoscale feature with a fair amount of spread in the ensemble guidance, confidence should still be pretty low for this scenario.

GFS has done fairly well in terms of 850mb temps with the cold shots this winter, just drops off surface temps too quickly with these cold shots coming and going so quickly before a true bitter cold air mass settles in.  That 0z run from last night would be nasty if it were to actually verify.  Drops the -28C line just south of Harrisburg, 490dm 1000-500mb thickness, and 30-35 mph winds sustained... talk about wind chill lol

 

Harrisburg record low for Sunday is -2F, record lowest high is 13F, record low for Monday is 0F, record lowest high is 9F... of those Monday low has best shot of any of those but with the wind I don't think we get there

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It is strange considering most of us have had near or above normal snowfall to date.

 

Its the internet syndrome...everyone wants everything all the time, in an instants notice...and when it doesnt happen, they cry in their milk and wish for warm sunny....(and someone even said HUMID) days....good grief.

 

Maybe I'll come on in the summer and pray for cold windy snowy days just to bug those who love the warmth so much...

 

 

edit.....the reality is that i wouldnt do that because i dont expect it at those times and find things to do to pass the time until I get my fix of snow and cold.  this winter hasnt been great but it hasnt been terrible either....and thats coming from a guy who lives in the ultimate Pa jipzone.

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