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Pittsburgh, Pa Winter 2023-24 Thread.


meatwad
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5 minutes ago, MikeB_01 said:

ahh the positivity. Never ending hope. 

 

Honestly though, its not a crazy solution. A slight tick NW and we are in it. 

We've seen these things verify a thousand times further north than modeled. Not impossible but doubtful. The Pirates might have a better chance to make the playoffs.

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4 hours ago, TimB said:

And let’s take a moment to recognize how bad the models are these days, even at very close range. Is that because we’ve rendered our atmosphere unrecognizable by allowing billionaires to take 13 minute private jet flights and pump megatons of carbon into the atmosphere?

I think this winter has proven to be a humbling experience thus far for weather-oriented folks.  Every time you think you're learning and understanding something, the atmosphere turns around and says, "Nah, bro," and kicks you in the nards like a middle school bully.

Our understanding of atmospheric physics is clearly still in the novice stage, about as deep as a kiddie pool (relatively speaking).  The fact that models continue to struggle this bad is evidence of that.  Our weather likely being heavily influenced by things happening in or around the Indian Ocean is the perfect illustration as to why we don't have a firm predictive grasp on global weather patterns.  It's the butterfly effect.

It's looking more possible the groundhog was right and we can forget this winter happened before too long.

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1 hour ago, jwilson said:

On the bright side, at least it was relatively easy to avoid investment into this storm.  Long range it looked like a cutter, then it got borderline for 48 hours but never really looked right, to suppressed mode in another 12 hours.

The funny thing is we got a rare SE shift, just the precip seemed to vanish on the NW side. Crazy 

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1 hour ago, jwilson said:

On the bright side, at least it was relatively easy to avoid investment into this storm.  Long range it looked like a cutter, then it got borderline for 48 hours but never really looked right, to suppressed mode in another 12 hours.

Imagine a scenario where you and your wife haven’t, well, you know, for two years. You elaborately prepare a fancy date night, buy her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, take her out to a nice restaurant, order and drink a bottle of the finest wine on the menu, then come home and hit the sack. All of a sudden, just as you’re getting ready to do the deed, your drunken neighbor barges through the front door thinking he’s at his house but he’s at yours. That’s what happened with this storm.

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4 minutes ago, TimB said:

Imagine a scenario where you and your wife haven’t, well, you know, for two years. You elaborately prepare a fancy date night, buy her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, take her out to a nice restaurant, order and drink a bottle of the finest wine on the menu, then come home and hit the sack. All of a sudden, just as you’re getting ready to do the deed, your drunken neighbor barges through the front door thinking he’s at his house but he’s at yours. That’s what happened with this storm.

Look on the bright side if the Euro is right then that drunken neighbor is really going to ruin your night. The euro is like the drunken neighbor coming into your house and then shooting you thinking you are trespassing.

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2 minutes ago, TimB said:

Imagine a scenario where you and your wife haven’t, well, you know, for two years. You elaborately prepare a fancy date night, buy her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, take her out to a nice restaurant, order and drink a bottle of the finest wine on the menu, then come home and hit the sack. All of a sudden, just as you’re getting ready to do the deed, your drunken neighbor barges through the front door thinking he’s at his house but he’s at yours. That’s what happened with this storm.

I’ve lived that scenario(figuratively), and this isn’t quite that. Dec 2000 and March 2001 in Harrisburg, I lost 3’ of predicted snow at nowcast time. Some of our WTODs had that vibe too

This one always had red flags. I spent a lot of time on it because the modeling was so interesting and would have been a fun threading of the needle. 
 

 

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3 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Look on the bright side if the Euro is right then that drunken neighbor is really going to ruin your night. The euro is like the drunken neighbor coming into your house and then shooting you thinking you are trespassing.

Euro just did a big rug pull for a lot of folks.... Here I am looking at this map.. If I can't have her no one can. lol

yes-jack-nicholson.gif.aa1158fc4405ac1afe81892cceea42c4.gif

image.thumb.png.e2bd88fcdd3d4692a3288c1d5248a362.png.826483618a56153723303add9f928f0d.png

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3 minutes ago, Burghblizz said:

I’ve lived that scenario(figuratively), and this isn’t quite that. Dec 2000 and March 2001 in Harrisburg, I lost 3’ of predicted snow at nowcast time. Some of our WTODs had that vibe too

This one always had red flags. I spent a lot of time on it because the modeling was so interesting and would have been a fun threading of the needle. 
 

 

True. This isn’t 1/19/19.

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11 minutes ago, north pgh said:

This storm is moving so fast we probably wouldn't even see a flake fall unless you were awake at 4:00 am. I'll drive to my meeting tomorrow morning with a few flakes in the air and bare wet ground and take it. On to the next week. No biggie. 

HECS or bust at this point. Not really interested in a 3-6 storm that melts by midday. I should have no excuses for my golf game with this weather.

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7 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

HECS or bust at this point. Not really interested in a 3-6 storm that melts by midday. I should have no excuses for my golf game with this weather.

Don't get me wrong, I will take a 1-3 storm anytime during the day but if it happens while I'm asleep then to me it's no fun shoveling it if you can't see it falling.

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2 hours ago, Burghblizz said:

The funny thing is we got a rare SE shift, just the precip seemed to vanish on the NW side. Crazy 

Yep, really a function in the change of the confluence up north. 

This is from 0Z Saturday when it looked like the storm could have driven north of us.  Here you can see the northern stream is pretty flat and not particularly intense (area across Northern Michigan and Wisconsin), while our s/w of relevance is relatively spread and unaffected.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_29.thumb.png.0c2c566baae7eab1d582415e2c542abc.png

 

And then this is 12Z today.  Suddenly you have a bit of a notch developing in the wavelengths (stronger confluence), and it's also pressing down more with less of a West to East, flat orientation.  It's exerting more influence, overall.

Our area of relevance is more compressed, too, because of those NS changes.  Most of the energy is confined to a SE quadrant.  Precip shield cannot extend further to the NW away from that vorticity.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_9.thumb.png.ec52f8be52c7400a7037e9069b3706b6.png

 

Manipulating a system like this creates your intense and compact deformation bands, but it limits the AOI of the storm.  Enough to generate those crazy gradients.

I think part of the problem lately is that NS moving so fast anymore and with it constantly dropping s/w after s/w, we're having more trouble timing things properly.  It feels like our only hope is to get the NS to phase in and give us something bigger while hoping we have some kind of block in place to prevent a storm from progressing north unimpeded.  It seems we can't just run a developed southern stream event without interference.  This is something more akin to Nina behavior, too.

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1 hour ago, jwilson said:

Yep, really a function in the change of the confluence up north. 

This is from 0Z Saturday when it looked like the storm could have driven north of us.  Here you can see the northern stream is pretty flat and not particularly intense (area across Northern Michigan and Wisconsin), while our s/w of relevance is relatively spread and unaffected.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_29.thumb.png.0c2c566baae7eab1d582415e2c542abc.png

 

And then this is 12Z today.  Suddenly you have a bit of a notch developing in the wavelengths (stronger confluence), and it's also pressing down more with less of a West to East, flat orientation.  It's exerting more influence, overall.

Our area of relevance is more compressed, too, because of those NS changes.  Most of the energy is confined to a SE quadrant.  Precip shield cannot extend further to the NW away from that vorticity.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_9.thumb.png.ec52f8be52c7400a7037e9069b3706b6.png

 

Manipulating a system like this creates your intense and compact deformation bands, but it limits the AOI of the storm.  Enough to generate those crazy gradients.

I think part of the problem lately is that NS moving so fast anymore and with it constantly dropping s/w after s/w, we're having more trouble timing things properly.  It feels like our only hope is to get the NS to phase in and give us something bigger while hoping we have some kind of block in place to prevent a storm from progressing north unimpeded.  It seems we can't just run a developed southern stream event without interference.  This is something more akin to Nina behavior, too.

Interesting thanks for the analysis. Always appreciate those who are smarter than me chiming in and breaking things down.

 

With that being said we have to be honest with ourselves about this storm. This was never gonna be a "big dog" for us. We have a marginal air mass and nothing to slow it down. It sucks but it's not like we are missing out on 12+. On to the next one.

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14 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Interesting thanks for the analysis. Always appreciate those who are smarter than me chiming in and breaking things down.

 

With that being said we have to be honest with ourselves about this storm. This was never gonna be a "big dog" for us. We have a marginal air mass and nothing to slow it down. It sucks but it's not like we are missing out on 12+. On to the next one.

I mean, it wasn’t. But it’s still frustrating that we went from being rain and  too far south to twelve hours later the models showing us too far north lol. 

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Maybe I’m just misremembering but I don’t remember some of these absolutely wild swings within 48 hours. I mean I remember the gradual bleeds north on the models but I can’t remember a storm just up and shifting 100’s of miles over two runs two days out 

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30 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

I mean, it wasn’t. But it’s still frustrating that we went from being rain and  too far south to twelve hours later the models showing us too far north lol. 

Oh I completely agree and the Mets are baffled by this development. Hopefully we score something before spring.

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6 hours ago, jwilson said:

Yep, really a function in the change of the confluence up north. 

This is from 0Z Saturday when it looked like the storm could have driven north of us.  Here you can see the northern stream is pretty flat and not particularly intense (area across Northern Michigan and Wisconsin), while our s/w of relevance is relatively spread and unaffected.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_29.thumb.png.0c2c566baae7eab1d582415e2c542abc.png

 

And then this is 12Z today.  Suddenly you have a bit of a notch developing in the wavelengths (stronger confluence), and it's also pressing down more with less of a West to East, flat orientation.  It's exerting more influence, overall.

Our area of relevance is more compressed, too, because of those NS changes.  Most of the energy is confined to a SE quadrant.  Precip shield cannot extend further to the NW away from that vorticity.

2-14_ecmwf_z500_vort_us_9.thumb.png.ec52f8be52c7400a7037e9069b3706b6.png

 

Manipulating a system like this creates your intense and compact deformation bands, but it limits the AOI of the storm.  Enough to generate those crazy gradients.

I think part of the problem lately is that NS moving so fast anymore and with it constantly dropping s/w after s/w, we're having more trouble timing things properly.  It feels like our only hope is to get the NS to phase in and give us something bigger while hoping we have some kind of block in place to prevent a storm from progressing north unimpeded.  It seems we can't just run a developed southern stream event without interference.  This is something more akin to Nina behavior, too.

Great call outs. It’s easy to look at the surface and where the precip is depicted, but it’s the upper levels that drives it. 

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14 hours ago, KPITSnow said:

Maybe I’m just misremembering but I don’t remember some of these absolutely wild swings within 48 hours. I mean I remember the gradual bleeds north on the models but I can’t remember a storm just up and shifting 100’s of miles over two runs two days out 

It does depend a bit on which model you followed.  The Canadian and Ukie both picked up on the southern solution earlier, starting Thursday into Friday.  Thursday at 0Z was the last run the CMC showed a really amped northern push.

The problem is forecasters, myself included, don't put as much stock in those compared to the GFS and Euro, and those two were still showing a bigger spread into Sunday.  It's a bad performance, but the GFS has been quite bad this winter, overall.

There's always those occasions where certain models score an unexpected win.  Back in 2016, for example, even the NAM scored a win, and that's quite rare.

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42 minutes ago, jwilson said:

It does depend a bit on which model you followed.  The Canadian and Ukie both picked up on the southern solution earlier, starting Thursday into Friday.  Thursday at 0Z was the last run the CMC showed a really amped northern push.

The problem is forecasters, myself included, don't put as much stock in those compared to the GFS and Euro, and those two were still showing a bigger spread into Sunday.  It's a bad performance, but the GFS has been quite bad this winter, overall.

There's always those occasions where certain models score an unexpected win.  Back in 2016, for example, even the NAM scored a win, and that's quite rare.

Sometimes the pattern or setup plays into a models overall bias or particular wheelhouse which maybe allows it to be more "right" for the wrong reason. In this case usually the CMC is the amped up one so to me that was a red flag, but when it's on it's own you usually toss it. Overall, the outcomes across all guidance (ENS / OPs) did show what happened as a possibility, the part I find the strangest is how long it took for them to catch on.

Anyways, what a storm, rates are ridiculous out here, maybe 120,000 lumens per second. :lol:

1038332576_PXL_20240213_1314379502.jpg.59c5530b141f81cc61e425a8436f9afd.jpg

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2 hours ago, TimB said:

Not a drop of precip. Impressive really. Looks like there were even periods of clear skies observed at PIT through the night.

I thought that might be the case yesterday with that sharp cutoff, especially when the short-range models started showing like .01 of total qpf.

Honestly this is better, I'd rather it be a full-on miss, rather than having some flurries or something that just remind you all day what was missed.

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