Central PA - Winter 2021/2022

[canderson]

46 out. Hoodie weather! 

[Porsche]

22 minutes ago, TugHillMatt said:

@Porsche, oops, didn't realize you work there. lol

All good @TugHillMatt  Been here for 30 years, don't take anything personally. 

[paweather]

7 minutes ago, Porsche said:

All good @TugHillMatt  Been here for 30 years, don't take anything personally. 

30 years WOW Congrats

[WmsptWx]

Are you the owner?

[Itstrainingtime]

42 minutes ago, Porsche said:

All good @TugHillMatt  Been here for 30 years, don't take anything personally. 

That's awesome, good for you! I've been with my company for 25 years and working in HR, not a lot of long-term commitment today from people that there was years ago. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different mindset. 

[TimB]

3 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

That's awesome, good for you! I've been with my company for 25 years and working in HR, not a lot of long-term commitment today from people that there was years ago. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different mindset. 

To be fair, the pros/cons of staying with a company for 25-30 years now probably aren’t as favorable as they were 25-30 years ago. But of course we also have the internet where you can find all sorts of jobs where the grass is (allegedly) greener at the click of a button.

[paweather]

5 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

To be fair, the pros/cons of staying with a company for 25-30 years now probably aren’t as favorable as they were 25-30 years ago. But of course we also have the internet where you can find all sorts of jobs where the grass is (allegedly) greener at the click of a button.

I was with my company for 18 years before I left as well

[Itstrainingtime]

4 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

To be fair, the pros/cons of staying with a company for 25-30 years now probably aren’t as favorable as they were 25-30 years ago. But of course we also have the internet where you can find all sorts of jobs where the grass is (allegedly) greener at the click of a button.

I agree completely - I'm not knocking or begrudging anyone from moving around. I hope it didn't come across that I was. I will tell you that our workforce of 950 employees is made up of 43 that left and came back. That's almost 5% of our workforce. I find that interesting. 

[TimB]

2 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

I agree completely - I'm not knocking or begrudging anyone from moving around. I hope it didn't come across that I was. I will tell you that our workforce of 950 employees is made up of 43 that left and came back. That's almost 5% of our workforce. I find that interesting. 

I didn’t figure you were begrudging anyone. And that 5% of your workforce comment speaks volumes about the “grass is greener” mentality - in many cases it isn’t.

[Itstrainingtime]

Pretty good returns on radar over Lanco right now but nothing falling from the sky here other than bird droppings. 

[paweather]

22 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Pretty good returns on radar over Lanco right now but nothing falling from the sky here other than bird droppings. 

Same in Lebanon County

[paweather]

Nothing coming down good returns 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

1 hour ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Pretty good returns on radar over Lanco right now but nothing falling from the sky here other than bird droppings. 

 

19 minutes ago, paweather said:

Nothing coming down good returns 

The culprit is a narrow but quite dry layer around 900mb. 

[Blizzard of 93]

@losetoa6 is busy in the Mid Atlantic thread working on reeling in the Valentines Day snow storm! 

[MAG5035]

On 1/28/2022 at 7:56 PM, MAG5035 said:

Some additional thoughts going forward… I wouldn’t completely sleep on the next bigger weather system slated late next week being just a straight up big warm up and rainmaker… especially in the more interior portions of C-PA but even region-wide too.

First feature of note is mid-week a pretty strong low is slated to track well north of the Lakes and tries to drag a frontal boundary which is likely what the main system will run on. Euro seems more concise with one main wave and GFS a bit drawn out with an additional wave running that eventually pulls the cold boundary and turns a lot of C-PA to ice and frozen just prior to fresh arctic air blasting into PA . There’s also a lot of cold and high pressure on the playing field. While main focus in terms of the strongest high presses cold more into the Central/Mountain West US via a western trough that briefly develops in the western US.. there is half decent high pressure present modeled to our north. Given the range, the globals don’t generally see the CAD as well so there’s the possibility of a messy front end of the event. Most of interior C-PA has an established pack too. The low tracks are pretty close too, really. The 18z GFS for instance takes the eventual main surface low thru PA while the 12z Euro was up into the Lower Lakes and then up the St Lawrence. Timing and progression are going to be important…wouldn’t take too much in what has been a progressive winter for this to be more progressive and suddenly have us more on the better side of the low. The GEFS currently presents a plethora of p-types (at various timing differences) across all of PA. So I’ll be keeping an eye on that since this is still in the 5-7 day range. With all that said, we are going to experience a moderating trend mid week next week (mainly Tues-Thur timeframe). 

Getting further into February, I really don’t see any reason to not have more chances at snow, even though we may have more changeable weather (ups and downs). We’ll continue to go as the Pac goes as the NAO/AO has generally been positive and continues to stay that way.The AO does dip negative for a time later next week, but generally speaking we don’t have an established blocking pattern in that realm. The big keys are the continued -WPO and neutral to negative EPO maintaining that Pac ridge and continuing to provide a cold source region that will continue to push cold air into the CONUS. I was watching the PNA as it is going to go negative some next week, which is why we moderate as ridging builds in the East. This is gonna be nowhere near the magnitude of the -PNA in December and it is forecast to quickly go back into positive territory some. 

The other thing I’m watching is the MJO. It is currently in the null phase (circle of death, etc).. basically right now it’s in a position where it’s not exerting a significant influence into the Mid-Latitudes. Which is fine.. the ECMWF pretty much keeps it there indefinitely. The JMA and NCEP stuff eventually get it into phase 3 (still a cold phase) and the NCEP spaghetti plot does show some potential of this to perhaps eventually run into 4 and so forth. With the other regular teleconnections staying pretty serviceable for now (esp on the Pac side) the only thing I really worry about is a new stronger MJO pulse running the 4-5-6 gauntlet… especially in a full blown mature Nina. Something like that would obviously likely ensure our overall chances of winter weather are much lower during such a period. Fortunately, A. That’s not really showing currently, just a concern of mine and B. Even if this were to start showing say within the next 6-10 days it would be probably be after mid Feb before we saw any sensible pattern changes. So going forward, yea we’re not going to win all the storms and probably warm up here and there.. but there remains plenty of cold in the pattern and plenty of chances down the road at least the next couple weeks, IMO. 

Some updated thoughts on the pattern. The quoted above was the large post I made back on Jan 28th for reference and review. First off that was at the time, in the 5-7 day range of what was for most in here our messy waste of QPF last week…but it did remind  me that the event at that range had started on most modeling as a mostly rain event and a more pronounced warm-up. And while it did end up mostly rain for roughly SE half of PA, it did end up being more focused on the second wave and cold did get into western/northern PA to make for a half decent ice and snow event by the end. And western PA cleaned up some Friday with the remaining deform snow.

Anyways, main focus on this post is the pattern going forward. There’s really no big changes to my overall thoughts, especially the portions of my quoted post I bolded. We really are going as the Pac goes in terms of the teleconnections with a +NAO/AO. This week, we have troughing over Alaska which cuts the Siberian connection and also turns the source region a bit more Pacific-ish even though there is still solid Pac ridging. Additionally. we have a pretty established +AO. Both of these things will act to evacuate true arctic air out of the CONUS. Still, our region will have seasonable chilly weather with a couple bouts of days with somewhat above average temps. Other issue with these points is the storm track. Clearly a northern branch dominated week with several clipper waves running it. However, the pattern alignment has the mean storm track taking the clipper lows fairly well north of PA. The result of this becomes the aforementioned bouts of above average surface temps with the milder temperature pattern and W/SW flow ahead of the clipper systems. This also usually presents downsloping issues east of the mountains in said W/SW flow with precip. Definitely a week we could have benefited from even just a little bit of help from the NAO/AO realm. 

Next chance of a bigger system appears to be roughly near Valentines Day, but there’s several issues to overcome there. Lot’s of different moving pieces is one issue, especially in the northern branch. That has been a theme for the last month or so since we’ve established the colder regime back in early January. Timing a phase with a less robust southern stream and associated issues with ejecting energy out of the SW US/Mexico is another. Still a chance to be be watched though as we do set up a western ridge/eastern trough for this timeframe, but currently it looks too progressive and not enough dig and interaction of features…  with progression likely enhanced more given +NAO/AO. These are common Nina issues which by the way, we are still in presently (NDJ ONI average was -1.0ºC). Despite that, some of the US precip patterns have been very non Nina-like, especially in the Pac NW. A drier California is a pretty common thing but the Pac NW usually has above average precip in a Nina. They’ve been shut out the past month just like California has. I suspect that has had to do with the anomalous and very persistent northern Pac/western US ridging.. which has helped us stay in the game for systems (with not a lot of luck locally) and have provided us with the colder Eastern US version of the La Niña state temp-wise. 

The MJO has indeed tended more towards Phase 2/3 in the last week, and is forecast to remain in that realm at least in the interim.. esp on NCEP guidance. Those phases are “colder” phases, and the trend has staved off my worry of a renewed pulse running 4-5-6 during the business end of February. Something like that would have likely helped move along the type of wholesale pattern change in the Pacific that would have taken us out of commission in the East. The Pacific teleconnections still look workable, with the EPO/WPO trending back negative. Those two tellys are starting out neutral (WPO) to  positive (EPO)  this week as part of what had been a forecasted brief reversal from both being persistently negative. And you can see how we quickly lose the really cold air out of the pattern in the CONUS with that brief reversal. The cons are no help from the NAO/AO (pegged at a solid positive), and some trending toward a negative PNA toward week two (esp on Euro and CMC ensembles). So that’ll be interesting to see what that does if it comes to fruition. I suspect a negative PNA would instigate more storminess and precip across the CONUS but could put us on the wrong side of it if it’s too strong given +NAO/AO. This all boils down to me having the opinion that the second half of the month could be a good bit more active than what the first half is presently shaping up to be (sans the Feb 4th event).. but with that could come more swings in temp anomalies and less persistent cold. That’s nothing really groundbreaking for how the second half of February typically goes, but the chance should be there to cash in on something. 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

I had a mixture of some very light sleet and drizzle last evening -- let's call it slizzle -- before dropping to 26 last night and waking up to some slick surfaces this morning.  Beautiful week ahead. 

[paweather]

16 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

I had a mixture of some very light sleet and drizzle last evening -- let's call it slizzle -- before dropping to 26 last night and waking up to some slick surfaces this morning.  Beautiful week ahead. 

Yep agree I would put Beautiful and Boring week ahead but things hopefully will get better 2nd part of Feb. 

[canderson]

Mid 50s Wednesday. Going to feel warm. 

[Itstrainingtime]

51 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

I had a mixture of some very light sleet and drizzle last evening -- let's call it slizzle -- before dropping to 26 last night and waking up to some slick surfaces this morning.  Beautiful week ahead. 

Had the same mixture last evening. Woke up early this morning to one of the thicker frosts of the season. That in conjunction with the leftover moisture provided some interesting driving conditions on the way down 441 this morning. 

At any rate - it's quickly turning into a glorious morning with the promise of more beautiful weather to come. Going to enjoy every bit of it. 

[Itstrainingtime]

17 minutes ago, canderson said:

Mid 50s Wednesday. Going to feel really, really good. 

 

[canderson]

Forecast high today is 36. It's 11:17 a.m. and 39 already. 

[sauss06]

20 hours ago, Itstrainingtime said:

That's awesome, good for you! I've been with my company for 25 years and working in HR, not a lot of long-term commitment today from people that there was years ago. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different mindset. 

 

20 hours ago, TimB84 said:

To be fair, the pros/cons of staying with a company for 25-30 years now probably aren’t as favorable as they were 25-30 years ago. But of course we also have the internet where you can find all sorts of jobs where the grass is (allegedly) greener at the click of a button.

currently on year 38

 

mid 50s tomorrow. i'll go outside for chores

[paweather]

29 minutes ago, canderson said:

Forecast high today is 36. It's 11:17 a.m. and 39 already. 

I'm still at 34 and it feels cold out with the wind

 

[canderson]

Just now, paweather said:

I'm still at 34 and it feels cold out with the wind

 

The wind is biting for sure. 

[sauss06]

1 hour ago, paweather said:

I'm still at 34 and it feels cold out with the wind

 

 

1 hour ago, canderson said:

The wind is biting for sure. 

yep. it would feel much better without it

[paweather]

Euro and GFS are a whole lot of nothing

[canderson]

2 minutes ago, paweather said:

Euro and GFS are a whole lot of nothing

Yup, a barren wasteland. 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

Curious if anyone on the board has had less seasonal snowfall than me so far?  I'm at 8.9".

[Festus]

Well, to fill the weather void and because I'm apparently obsessed with daylight, we now have 1 hour and 7 minutes more sunrise to sunset time than on December 21st.

Sunset (at least for Lancaster) is now past 5:30 and on Friday, we will be into October-equivalent sun angle.

[paweather]

1 minute ago, Festus said:

Well, to fill the weather void and because I'm apparently obsessed with daylight, we now have 1 hour and 7 minutes more sunrise to sunset time than on December 21st.

Sunset (at least for Lancaster) is now past 5:30 and on Friday, we will be into October-equivalent sun angle.

If/when storms come we will need to start watching the sun angle