Pittsburgh, Pa Summer 2024 Thread.

[jwilson]

Had a lightning strike right outside my window, but other than that not much in terms of thunder-weather.  It was plenty humid today, though.

[TheClimateChanger]

4 hours ago, TimB said:

Looks like another 94. That’s 2 in a row. We haven’t had 3 days in a row of 94+ in any month since 1995.

I don’t think we do it. Tomorrow looks subtly cooler aloft. Probably 91 or 92. Maybe Thursday to Saturday, which looks warmer. Might manage an official 95 or 96 during that stretch.

[Ahoff]

Wow KPIT, on the 5 min obs jumped to 81 at 8:30am.

[TimB]

3 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Wow KPIT, on the 5 min obs jumped to 81 at 8:30am.

Running several degrees ahead of yesterday, but some of that may be a product of a warmer overnight low.

[Ahoff]

12 minutes ago, TimB said:

Running several degrees ahead of yesterday, but some of that may be a product of a warmer overnight low.

Stand to reason we’ll easily get to 90.  We’ll see how high we get again.

[TheClimateChanger]

39 minutes ago, TimB said:

Running several degrees ahead of yesterday, but some of that may be a product of a warmer overnight low.

Quite cloudy and hazy today. Probably going to be a slower climb today. Should still reach 90+ with the high starting point.

[TimB]

11 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Quite cloudy and hazy today. Probably going to be a slower climb today. Should still reach 90+ with the high starting point.

Interestingly, heat advisory criteria have yet to be met at PIT. Highest heat index so far has been 99.

[Ahoff]

Another question I had that I’ve noticed.  The official observations (like at 7:51, 8:51, etc) seem weird from all the obs around that time.  An example is today at each official observation had overcast as the sky cover, but the 5 minute obs never recorded overcast all morning.  Why throw it in if they aren’t observing it.  They do it with temp too.  It will read a certain temp at the times before the official and they’ll drop it, then a few minutes later it goes right back up.  
 

what’s the reason for that?

[Ahoff]

9 minutes ago, TimB said:

Interestingly, heat advisory criteria have yet to be met at PIT. Highest heat index so far has been 99.

Yeah, the excessive heat warning is a head scratcher, unless they believe we’ll get there later in the week.

[TheClimateChanger]

20 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Another question I had that I’ve noticed.  The official observations (like at 7:51, 8:51, etc) seem weird from all the obs around that time.  An example is today at each official observation had overcast as the sky cover, but the 5 minute obs never recorded overcast all morning.  Why throw it in if they aren’t observing it.  They do it with temp too.  It will read a certain temp at the times before the official and they’ll drop it, then a few minutes later it goes right back up.  
 

what’s the reason for that?

The official temperature is taken to the nearest tenth of a degree in Celsius, and then converted to Fahrenheit (and rounded to nearest whole degree). The five minute observations read only to the nearest whole degree Celsius before the conversion, so due to rounding it can often be +/- 1F of what is shown. On sky cover, the METAR is augmented by a contract observer. The ASOS ceilorometer (sp?) only reports cloud cover at or below 12,000 feet. If the cloud deck is above that level, as it is this morning, the ASOS will report clear skies (which really only means clear skies below 12,000 feet). Also sometimes, it can miss some isolated lower clouds so you might see the ASOS report clear when it really should be something like FEW040 (a few clouds at 4,000 feet).

None of the other ASOS or AWOS sites are augmented, so that's why PIT will often report much more substantial cloud cover than the other smaller local airports.

[Ahoff]

4 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

The official temperature is taken to the nearest tenth of a degree in Celsius, and then converted to Fahrenheit (and rounded to nearest whole degree). The five minute observations read only to the nearest whole degree Celsius before the conversion, so due to rounding it can often be +/- 1F of what is shown. On sky cover, the METAR is augmented by a contract observer. The ASOS ceilorometer (sp?) only reports cloud cover at or below 12,000 feet. If the cloud deck is above that level, as it is this morning, the ASOS will report clear skies (which really only means clear skies below 12,000 feet). Also sometimes, it can miss some isolated lower clouds so you might see the ASOS report clear when it really should be something like FEW040 (a few clouds at 4,000 feet).

None of the other ASOS or AWOS sites are augmented, so that's why PIT will often report much more substantial cloud cover than the other smaller local airports.

Ok, that makes sense.  I always wondered why there was a discrepancy, thanks.

[TheClimateChanger]

37 minutes ago, TimB said:

Interestingly, heat advisory criteria have yet to be met at PIT. Highest heat index so far has been 99.

Yes, albeit many of the other local sites have reached 100+ due to slightly higher dewpoints. Almost impossible to reach official EHW criteria in the month of June at the airport. Only happened once since 1945 - June 27, 1978. The high that day was "only" 93F, so dewpoint readings must have been in the upper 70s to get that high of a heat index. Didn't even reach 105+ during 1994 or 1988, as humidity was relatively modest. I suspect NWS upgraded to EHW just due to duration and recognizing some of the lower elevation locations and the city probably have heat indices 2 or 3F warmer than the official values. Maybe we get closer later in the week or on Saturday.

[Ahoff]

Might actually be a struggle to 90 today.  Cloud cover is pretty thick.  Strong ridges don't do a whole lot for our area, lol.

Yeah, really cloudy out there, fairly dark clouds too.  What is the reasoning behind so many clouds with a supposedly historically strong ridge?  Can’t be only humidity levels, we’ve had very humid days with plenty of sun.  Feels like there’s been more clouds than sun this week.  This is kind of a busted forecast from the NWS from just a few days ago.

[blackngoldrules]

Might actually be a struggle to 90 today.  Cloud cover is pretty thick.  Strong ridges don't do a whole lot for our area, lol.
Yeah, really cloudy out there, fairly dark clouds too.  What is the reasoning behind so many clouds with a supposedly historically strong ridge?  Can’t be only humidity levels, we’ve had very humid days with plenty of sun.  Feels like there’s been more clouds than sun this week.  This is kind of a busted forecast from the NWS from just a few days ago.

There were some NWS forecasts, and I posted one of them a few days ago, that had Pit getting up to around 100 for a few days. I think they had 101 in one of those days. Definitely a far cry from that. They had no rain in the forecast at all late last week and now we've had lots of clouds and scattered storms.

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[Burghblizz]

This stretch is still impressive in its length of warmth for early season, but not so much in its extremes. I think I’m at like 86 right now. 
 

Storms Monday were no joke. I didn’t see any official wind gusts, and I don’t have a weather station. We had to be over 70 MPH gusts in Cranberry. Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen wind driven rain like that. 

[TimB]

High so far at the airport is 87 or 88 despite hitting 84 by 9:40 this morning and having no cold front and zero precip. I wonder if that’s ever happened.

[Ahoff]

19 minutes ago, TimB said:

High so far at the airport is 87 or 88 despite hitting 84 by 9:40 this morning and having no cold front and zero precip. I wonder if that’s ever happened.

I did wonder if at some point during this “historic” heat wave if we would miss 90 at least once.  Today could be the day.

More sun out now, so could make one final push, but we don’t do well with that kind of surge.  5 minute obs do say 90 right now, but that could obviously mean 89.  Still have a little heating to go possibly.

But the Excessive Heat Warning probably needs to go.  Heat advisory should be sufficient for rest of the week.

[TheClimateChanger]

Looks like we’re going to be 89’d again like Sunday. Meanwhile, an all-time record of 96F in Caribou, Maine. Add northern Maine to the list of places that do heat better than Pittsburgh. 

[TimB]

11 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Looks like we’re going to be 89’d again like Sunday. Meanwhile, an all-time record of 96F in Caribou, Maine. Add northern Maine to the list of places that do heat better than Pittsburgh. 

Pretty impressive if we fall short of 90 when the zone forecast was calling for a high of “near 100” in Allegheny County today as recently as 1pm on Saturday, just 96 hours out.

[Ahoff]

Also, this doesn’t look all that impressive for the east Coast either.  I wasn’t seeing so many 100s in the forecast for areas that often hit that number.

[Ahoff]

1 minute ago, TimB said:

Pretty impressive if we fall short of 90 when the zone forecast was calling for a high of “near 100” in Allegheny County today as recently as 1pm on Saturday, just 96 hours out.

Yeah, pretty major fail.  I’d say that’s on par with predicting a foot of snow and getting an inch.

[TimB]

6 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Yeah, pretty major fail.  I’d say that’s on par with predicting a foot of snow and getting an inch.

The thing that’s odd is they won’t usually predict a foot of snow 4 days out, so that type of bust doesn’t happen. So it’s odd that they’d predict triple digit heat at the same lead time.

[Ahoff]

5 minutes ago, TimB said:

The thing that’s odd is they won’t usually predict a foot of snow 4 days out, so that type of bust doesn’t happen. So it’s odd that they’d predict triple digit heat at the same lead time.

Weren't we in a pretty good spot once this year for a good snow only to be heartbroken again, lol?

But, I guess that's true, they were literally predicting all time temperatures, not just saying there's a possibility, and we're ending up with a normal hot summer day.  The NWS should be a bit better at forecasting our area idiosyncracies.  Wild.

[Ahoff]

Looks like it'll be 89, unless there was a very brief push to 90 somewhere.

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

While the current warm spell may have been a bit of a letdown thus far, it does appear increasingly likely that we see the warmest June on record at Pittsburgh International Airport, and a top ten warmest June in the threaded record.
 

The number to beat at the current location is 73.0F from 1967. To get into the top ten overall, we would need a mean of 73.3F. There is a decent chance that it will be our warmest June overall since 1943, when the mean temperature was 74.5F. I estimate the mean should increase to around 72.9F through the 26th (based on current forecast) with continued warmer than normal weather likely thereafter.

[TimB]

90 might be in trouble again today. I do think we get there, but still a far cry from historic.

[TheClimateChanger]

Should be able to reach 90 or 91. It’s already reached 87 or 88, and it’s quite a bit brighter than yesterday when it reached 89F. Still variable cloud cover, so one of those days if you get an extended intrahour sunny interval, it can shoot up a couple degrees then drop back.

[north pgh]

89 yesterday. Currently 86. Wow. Historic heat. It hasn't been this hot since maybe......every summer since the early 70's. And I didn't get air conditioning until 1989. How am I even alive. lol

[Rd9108]

Ehh it's pretty hot but this definitely looks like a bust on the low end. Regardless at these Temps and feels like it's still very dangerous for certain populations. Also try fighting a fire in this weather, it's not fun.....