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Central Pa - March Monster 2017


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As long as that saturated 700 mb stays over central PA, and with the advancing 500 mb height falls, there will still be a likelihood of snow and showers of snow right through the evening.  Just now real low level jet to help out...a wintry day for sure! 

Screen Shot 2017-03-14 at 2.44.28 PM.png

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4 hours ago, AllWeather said:

Capture.PNG.0f2384c07149ebef74b69ffc694a5681.PNG

 

Man, and I was feeling pretty good about our predictions. Gotta love viewers :) 

A Facebook friend had commented on either a Facebook post or live video WPXI in Pittsburgh had up about what happened to have to lower totals in that area so I saw their post on my news feed and I had a quick browse through some of the hundreds of comments and they were generally savages about it haha. I mean yea it busted over there but if one were to pay just a bit of extra attention to the forecasts they would know that that area had been looking at lower totals the last few days with the prospect of maybe not seeing much. And the funny part is they'll probably get a good bit of what they were supposed to get overnight when the sun goes down and that NW flow regime sets in anyways. 

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4 hours ago, clarks green snow said:

Absolutely dumping snow right now.

BGM Update

...

Binghamton had been having a banner winter prior to the February heat wave. I remember posting about them earlier in the winter having 92" for the season at that point or something which was already above their normal for the whole winter. If they end up with 20+ inches that's gotta be getting them near a top 5 winter for snowfall. 

 

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1 minute ago, maytownpawx said:

Lancaster county snow totals range from 4" along the  southern tier to upwards of 18" in E-town.

How is a meteorologist supposed to accurately predict that in advance? Just an amazing difference across 1 county. 

No kidding!  All Weather did a nice job communicating his thoughts and forecasts to the general public and frankly, was spot on!  In order to forecast here in the LSV and our proximity to both the Atlantic and even the bays, one has to have lived here and experienced this chaos over a lifetime...and then some.  My location is just to the SSW of KMDT, and I never once had sleet today.  Although I haven't yet made my final ob for liquid or snow accum, I'm about 0.30" less than KMDT for liquid, but my ratio was slightly higher leading to greater accums of snowfall.  The same with York County.  The southern part of the county has much less than up here.  That's what makes the LSV such a challenging place to forecast; frankly all of PA is difficult to forecast as the northern part of the state is in a different climatic zone than here in southern PA.  The Harrisburg area is kind of like the Worcester region of MA, with lesser snows as the systems are not totally matured at our latitude.  The proximity to the ocean is a good news/bad news situation.  Just a few miles towards the coast from Worcester and voila, sleet, freezing rain, and plain rain.  The Berkshires get some hefty snows from these coastal systems...

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15 minutes ago, Caveman said:

No kidding!  All Weather did a nice job communicating his thoughts and forecasts to the general public and frankly, was spot on!  In order to forecast here in the LSV and our proximity to both the Atlantic and even the bays, one has to have lived here and experienced this chaos over a lifetime...and then some.  My location is just to the SSW of KMDT, and I never once had sleet today.  Although I haven't yet made my final ob for liquid or snow accum, I'm about 0.30" less than KMDT for liquid, but my ratio was slightly higher leading to greater accums of snowfall.  The same with York County.  The southern part of the county has much less than up here.  That's what makes the LSV such a challenging place to forecast; frankly all of PA is difficult to forecast as the northern part of the state is in a different climatic zone than here in southern PA.  The Harrisburg area is kind of like the Worcester region of MA, with lesser snows as the systems are not totally matured at our latitude.  The proximity to the ocean is a good news/bad news situation.  Just a few miles towards the coast from Worcester and voila, sleet, freezing rain, and plain rain.  The Berkshires get some hefty snows from these coastal systems...

I see Roundtop recorded 20" as of 2:00pm. As the crow flies, it's almost due west of me by maybe 15 miles? I had a 2.5 hour period of mix or all sleet which cut my amounts back by a good 5" or so, I'd imagine. 

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24 minutes ago, paweather said:

WOW. That warm nose made it that far?

I think the sleet line must have stopped on the Dauphin/Lebanon/Lanco borders. If not, that was pretty close. A good chunk of Lancaster county had hours and hours of sleet. I was fortunate to be both somewhat north and very much west in the county. 

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4 minutes ago, maytownpawx said:

I think the sleet line must have stopped on the Dauphin/Lebanon/Lanco borders. If not, that was pretty close. A good chunk of Lancaster county had hours and hours of sleet. I was fortunate to be both somewhat north and very much west in the county. 

yeah, that is something! No sleet here. but boy how close was that.

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2 minutes ago, maytownpawx said:

I think the sleet line must have stopped on the Dauphin/Lebanon/Lanco borders. If not, that was pretty close. A good chunk of Lancaster county had hours and hours of sleet. I was fortunate to be both somewhat north and very much west in the county. 

I fully understand that synoptically 1993 and 2017 were not the same; similar, but not the same. Had the 500 mb low been a bit faster, maybe things would have turned out even more robust with snow accumulations further inland.  But I remember a good hour of sleet and liquid drops falling during the lightning and thunder in 1993, at the height of the storm, when I was in New Cumberland, and review the maps as to where that center of low pressure tracked. I had ~20" with the 1993 storm even with the sleet/rain.  Today, without any sleet or liquid, I still managed 18"+, "weaker" low pressure, without the lightning/thunder (and I believe the winds will increase overnight) so this system is one at the least for "my" books!

SurfaceMap_anim.gif

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6.3" had been my measured total from this morning. After about 10am this morning the snow falling had just been for show as rates were light and clouds thinned letting the strong sun in. The portion of my wooden deck I cleared actually was wet until just about a half hour ago as the sun is fading and we're getting a bit of a resurgence of snow falling currently. Deck is now starting to freeze and cover over again. Roads were in great shape this afternoon but are probably going to deteriorate tonight with additional snow, cold temps, and wind kicking. 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Caveman said:

I fully understand that synoptically 1993 and 2017 were not the same; similar, but not the same. Had the 500 mb low been a bit faster, maybe things would have turned out even more robust with snow accumulations further inland.  But I remember a good hour of sleet and liquid drops falling during the lightning and thunder in 1993, at the height of the storm, when I was in New Cumberland, and review the maps as to where that center of low pressure tracked. I had ~20" with the 1993 storm even with the sleet/rain.  Today, without any sleet or liquid, I still managed 18"+, "weaker" low pressure, without the lightning/thunder (and I believe the winds will increase overnight) so this system is one at the least for "my" books!

 

I was watching an old school National Geographic documentary on the 93 blizzard on youtube a few nights ago to get the mojo going for this one haha. It really was amazing how powerful that storm was. That was the rare triple phaser.... and the amplification was a lot deeper, driving all the way into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm was probably as deep as this one is now while it was still in Georgia and precipitation shield was massive... snowing in PA while the low was still in the Gulf. I really wish I was able to remember more of it. At the time I was stranded at my grandparent's and upset that the storm cancelled my 7th birthday party haha.   

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47 minutes ago, maytownpawx said:

I think the sleet line must have stopped on the Dauphin/Lebanon/Lanco borders. If not, that was pretty close. A good chunk of Lancaster county had hours and hours of sleet. I was fortunate to be both somewhat north and very much west in the county. 

I actually had sleet for about 30 minutes. It was about the time we had decent winds, it was stinging my face

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1 minute ago, MAG5035 said:

I was watching an old school National Geographic documentary on the 93 blizzard on youtube a few nights ago to get the mojo going for this one haha. It really was amazing how powerful that storm was. That was the rare triple phaser.... and the amplification was a lot deeper, driving all the way into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm was probably as deep as this one is now while it was still in Georgia and precipitation shield was massive... snowing in PA while the low was still in the Gulf. I really wish I was able to remember more of it. At the time I was stranded at my grandparent's and upset that the storm cancelled my 7th birthday party haha.   

Of course, many noteworthy things about the Superstorm.  I'll just share one of them.  I was living in North Central NJ, about 15 miles west of Newark.  The storm literally followed the NJ turnpike (the surface low pressure center) from Philadelphia up to New York City.  It passed between my home in Chatham and Newark Airport.  Because I remained to the center's west, my temperature only rose to a maximum of 29 degrees with sleet and snow.  Meanwhile, at the same time Newark Airport had shot up to 39 degrees with pouring rain.  As the center of the low passed within 10 miles of my home, I proceeded to record the lowest barometric pressure I had ever personally experienced and recorded, an incredible 961 millibars, or 28.39" of mercury!  It literally was like a hurricane passing nearly overhead.  Within 20 minutes of the passage of the low my temperature plummeted back down to the low 20's.  Prior to the arrival of the low center the majority of the storm had occurred with temperatures in the upper teens.  A truly historic storm, and one that I happened to end up extremely close to as it passed by.

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