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Central PA Winter 2022/2023


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We had a few snow showers this morning with the passage of the arctic cold front. Temperatures have fallen off from 32.7 at just before 5am to now 24.3 at 8am. Temps should steady off but not rise much this morning before falling again by mid-afternoon. We should see reading in the teens by 4pm and fall to around 8 degrees by tomorrow morning. It will be windy today with wind chills near to below zero through tonight. Tomorrow will be cold but much less wind. A warm up to again back above normal begins Sunday and we stay above normal for the rest of next week. Our next chance of rain will not be till next Thursday.
The record high for today is 60 degrees from 1991. Our record low was way back in 1895 at 4 below zero. Daily precipitation record is the 1.63" that fell today in 2014. Daily snow record is the 11.0" that fell in 1961 as part of a 2 day storm that ended on the 4th with 13.2" of snow falling.
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Mount Washington New Hampshire forecast from NWS: 

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.27049000000005&lon=-71.30345999999997#.Y90K43bMKXI

Today
Mostly sunny and cold, with a temperature falling to around -39 by 5pm. Very windy, with a northwest wind around 75 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph.
Tonight
Partly cloudy, with a low around -46. Wind chill values as low as -99. Very windy, with a northwest wind 75 to 85 mph increasing to 85 to 95 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 120 mph.
Saturday
Sunny and cold, with a high near -10. Very windy, with a northwest wind 90 to 100 mph decreasing to 65 to 75 mph. Winds could gust as high as 130 mph.
Saturday Night
Increasing clouds, with a low around -16. Wind chill values as low as -52. Very windy, with a west wind 50 to 55 mph becoming south after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 70 mph.
Sunday
A 30 percent chance of snow showers before 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 20. Very windy, with a south wind 60 to 65 mph, with gusts as high as 80 mph.
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4 minutes ago, mahantango#1 said:

Mount Washington New Hampshire forecast from NWS: 

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.27049000000005&lon=-71.30345999999997#.Y90K43bMKXI

Today
Mostly sunny and cold, with a temperature falling to around -39 by 5pm. Very windy, with a northwest wind around 75 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph.
Tonight
Partly cloudy, with a low around -46. Wind chill values as low as -99. Very windy, with a northwest wind 75 to 85 mph increasing to 85 to 95 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 120 mph.
Saturday
Sunny and cold, with a high near -10. Very windy, with a northwest wind 90 to 100 mph decreasing to 65 to 75 mph. Winds could gust as high as 130 mph.
Saturday Night
Increasing clouds, with a low around -16. Wind chill values as low as -52. Very windy, with a west wind 50 to 55 mph becoming south after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 70 mph.
Sunday
A 30 percent chance of snow showers before 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 20. Very windy, with a south wind 60 to 65 mph, with gusts as high as 80 mph.

Just your basic -99 Wind Chill and 130MPH Gust day.  

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6 minutes ago, mahantango#1 said:

Mount Washington New Hampshire forecast from NWS: 

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.27049000000005&lon=-71.30345999999997#.Y90K43bMKXI

Today
Mostly sunny and cold, with a temperature falling to around -39 by 5pm. Very windy, with a northwest wind around 75 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph.
Tonight
Partly cloudy, with a low around -46. Wind chill values as low as -99. Very windy, with a northwest wind 75 to 85 mph increasing to 85 to 95 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 120 mph.
Saturday
Sunny and cold, with a high near -10. Very windy, with a northwest wind 90 to 100 mph decreasing to 65 to 75 mph. Winds could gust as high as 130 mph.
Saturday Night
Increasing clouds, with a low around -16. Wind chill values as low as -52. Very windy, with a west wind 50 to 55 mph becoming south after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 70 mph.
Sunday
A 30 percent chance of snow showers before 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 20. Very windy, with a south wind 60 to 65 mph, with gusts as high as 80 mph.

What impresses me the most about that forecast?

Even up on Mt. Washington, which has the worst weather conditions in the east, it will be about 60 degrees warmer on Sunday than today. 

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20 hours ago, brooklynwx99 said:

I think CC really just serves to increase variance. we've been stuck in Ninas pretty much since 2015-16 (5 in the last 7 years), and those will dump troughs into the west and try and force a SE ridge, so it's no surprise that the MA hasn't done well, especially when CC is involved. however, once we flip back to a general Nino base state, which may occur next year, I would expect the same kind of anomalous weather as the West has been seeing. there's no reason to think otherwise

looking at the last 6 years from Dec-Feb, we can see all of the anomalous cold has been dumped into the NW US and Plains, which is what Ninas usually do. once we flip back to a good stretch of Ninos, I wouldn't be shocked to see the anomalies flip more to what we saw from 2009-10 to 2014-15, where much of the cold was in the E US with warmth over the WC

so, overall, I do think that the band will snap the other way, so to speak, over the next year or two. would make little sense for it not to. it's also a bit of people trying to rationalize a shitty stretch of winters, when in reality, they just happen sometimes, and we've been tremendously spoiled over the last 10-15 years. it's not like the earth has profoundly changed in the last 5-10 years... CC doesn't act that quickly

 

Well long post alert haha, I started with responding more about the current pattern we’re in and ended up getting into some other stuff I’ve been seeing posted about in here recently as well. 

Has there been much discussion about the PDO among the ones that discuss the overall pattern? Like a lot of people I’m sure, I’m of the opinion that the Pac has been in the driver’s seat the last several winters in our neck of the woods for good or for bad via the EPO/WPO/PNA. Not an expert in this realm by any means but I have been kind of considering and looking into that more as it’s likely a significant driver of the mid-latitude Pacific pattern and one that can have an effect over multiple winters. 

1946636518_PacificDecadalOscillation(PDO)NationalCentersforEnvironmentalInformation(NCEI).thumb.png.72fcdda97908427d0a57a528358d71c7.png

It’s shifted notably into a negative phase the last few winters, coupling with the persistent La Niña state which already implies SE ridge in the standard La-Nina pattern. Throw in the fact that SST in the Pac have been quite warm overall with respect to normal and also how warm the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic have been as well and it becomes somewhat obvious to a degree that “on paper” SE ridging could be a persistent problem for snow prospects on the East Coast with that combo. Specific to this winter, I also think we’ve simply been unlucky having the cold air available aside from very brief shots. Record breaking cold in Siberia and northern China during a portion of last month for example is often an indicator of the bulk of the real cold being on the other side of the hemisphere. Canada was void of anomalous cold or even normal cold to press the southeast ridge when we had a suppressed Pac jet slamming southern Cal and the SW states for the first half or so of January. 

To add to your point with the 2009-2015 period, comparing SST patterns to the last two truly cold winters (13-14 and 14-15) was interesting. The PDO reversed to positive during that period starting early Jan 2014. 

Day to day comparison 2014 vs this year

2014.thumb.png.40980d1057c15bc2c40afe8f51b1af9e.png

2015 vs this year

2015.thumb.png.631503e1981f142cd9b83dea703c4543.png

Both 2014 and 2015 had the pronounced +PDO signature and both had a warm western Atlantic with 2015 looking very similar to this year being especially warm and 2014 had fairly similar SSTs in the ENSO realm. Big difference is the warm SSTs pooling along the western NAMER coast (esp 2015) in the Pac coinciding with the dominant ridging being setup in that position allowing cold air to dump into the eastern US. This year the warm SSTs are in the central Pac all the way up to the Bering Strait with cooler waters along the west coast (-PDO signature). Would seem to favor the off coast Pac ridging and western/central CONUS troughing we’ve been seeing as the dominant look so far this winter. It should be interesting to see what kind of an ENSO response we end up getting for next winter and if we continue to have a solidly -PDO. It seems our recent Nino episodes come with this index being fairly neutral or positive while Ninas couple with it being negative. 

Underlying factor in these SST patterns is of course that it averages a good bit warmer as a whole than 20-30+ years ago and especially so in the last 10 or so. It’s a reality on data and observations regardless of one’s view of how much CC ultimately is affecting our sensible weather in the short/intermediate timeframe. Even folks like JB, who is heavily analog driven in his forecasting approach, acknowledge this when applying older analogs to construct a forecasting idea. I saw some posting in here recently about the Ocean Heat Content, which looks like this:

image.jpeg.9a237920c012f52863d34a80d729579b.jpeg

That’s graphing the anomaly of the oceans as a whole, while this shows specifically where heat gain/loss has been taking place in the last 30 yrs. 

image.jpeg.63aa79b3830bf87c36f8cfb80f538580.jpeg 

The Atlantic and the western Pacific around Japan are the two big areas of gain in the northern hemisphere. That can ultimately have implications to our weather patterns here. How much so is the debate, there’s a lot of different variables at play even with that basic reality.  I tend to agree that it’s more of a variance thing right now. In the context of a Mid-Atlantic winter I think the point some are trying to make is it’s making the difference of seeing a winter with a base crappy pattern that still delivers a couple events vs said crappy pattern not delivering anything at all…which is certainly a viable point. Of course the counterpoint to that could be when you line up a favorable pattern/setup you have a 2009-2010 or 2013-2014 type run or a Jan 2016 type one timer historic storm, and it all happens in a 5-7 year stretch like that did fairly recently. 

 

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44 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Hopefully flying home today. And hopefully the winds back down a little this evening or I'm going to have a rocky flight into MDT. Not scheduled to arrive until late evening so hopefully winds come down some. Local forecast for MDT suggests that it will...somewhat. 

You flying AA DFW-MDT? If so, I know that flight verrrrrrrrrrrry well. 

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1 minute ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

All this talk of Mt. Washington, such a fascinating place.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the observatory up there manned year-round to take weather observations?  Man, wouldn't it be something to be up there in the winter; talk about a feeling of isolation.

They have made Twilight Zone type shows based on that premise (any remote locale in the world including North Pole.) 

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Wave/disturbed area of weather coming up the East coast this weekend in conjunction with a cold front (attached to a very north based clipper going through Southern Canada) that looks to stall or fizzle out near us could throw some light/scattered precip back into cold air for the E parts of our area.... something to watch.  Not really modeled as such right now though the Fv3 and Rgem are close.   The cold front does look to reinforce the chill a bit for Monday with the CMC showing well below normal lows Tue.  

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