MAG5035

In my travels today this was Sideling Hill summit on route 30 in Fulton County. A little bit after 3 this afternoon. 

Still some lingering rain falling. Temps are also falling, now back to 39ºF.

Event total rainfall here is now 5.08” since Sunday Night. There has been plenty of flooding issues today and closed roads. Frankstown Branch of the Juniata now cresting just inside major flood stage around 15.5 feet at the Williamsburg gauge. 

Little Juniata is receding, having crested mid-late afternoon in moderate flood stage at about 10.7 feet. Here was some pics I got just a little bit downstream from the Little Juniata @ Spruce Creek gauge around the time of it’s crest.

2.3” was the daily total at midnight. Already 0.67” since midnight. Flooding issues of the small stream and poor drainage variety are occurring again. Another significant wave of rain on the doorstep. 

Approaching 2.0” for the day (1.98”) and 2.71” for the event. I’m legitimately concerned for flooding in the local tributaries around here given the new headwater guidance this evening and the amount of rain forecast to fall yet thru tomorrow. There were already some issues today and the Little Juniata had already edged above flood stage early this evening for a bit. 

The Frankstown Branch is highly likely to get to major, and the Little Juniata has a shot at major too, but certainly a moderate range crest looks increasingly likely. Both branches with that kind of response would likely mean issues on the main Juniata thru Huntingdon and Lewistown. 

Here’s the updated overall FFG for 6hrs in the MARFC coverage area. 

Raining heavily currently. Total for just today is already up to 1.7”, with 0.71” falling Sun Night into Mon morning.. bringing the event total to 2.41” already. I anticipate some flooding issues around here, especially with more periods of rain to come through tomorrow.  

2 hours ago, Atomixwx said:

I want an answer. How much cloud cover. And I want my answer from MU to be specific. Cloud cover at beach #6 on Presque Isle State Park.

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AccuWeather’s got you haha

About an inch of snow fell here overnight, the biggest such snowfall since all the way back on 2/17.

32ºF and flakes flying, no accums currently

58ºF for high on this last decently warm day before we get cold for a bit, in response to finally having a period of significantly -EPO. 

After this week the grass is definitely awake, even saw a dandelion in the yard. 

Just missed 70 the last couple days but it sure made it today. As high as 74ºF here so far this afternoon. Checked KAOO to see if it was a record day at 73ºF there and it apparently was not. The 80ºF daily record high in 1990 would appear to be safe.

13 hours ago, Atomixwx said:

How about now? I feel like I could articulate a plastic bag, jump, and be at your place in about three minutes with this wind.

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Last night was blustery but not overly windy down here, but it’s been a different story this morning though since just before daybreak. My station registered a high gust of 59 mph around 715am and there’s been plenty of 40+ gusts. 

33 minutes ago, canderson said:

Look at the KMDT obs . It must be funneling down the river. They’ve had multiple over 50 mph and currently at 46. 

More robust daytime heating at the surface over there probably resulted in higher wind gusts mixing down this afternoon. High res guidance increases the winds aloft overnight into the early part of the day tomorrow. So similar gusts are likely to continue. 

My high gust at home today is 32.4mph and most of the ASOS and RWIS around here (KAOO, KJST, etc have had max gusts in the 45mph range so far. 

 Laurel’s are looking pretty rough, specifically on the US 22 corridor right now in Cambria at the top of the mountain above Altoona.

Pretty wintry down here too, with a coating of snow on the ground and occasional heavier snow squalls blowing around. But roads are uncaved at the moment. Temp is 30ºF

1 hour ago, Atomixwx said:

Frankstown Branch of the Juniata by Birmingham on Rte 453 is close to caving the road. There is so. much. water.

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I’d imagine the gauge station down the road from there near Spruce Creek will get above flood stage and they’ll need an actual warning for that branch which is the Little Juniata. Moderate flood stage at 10ft is roughly the benchmark for the road caving to the river along that stretch of 453. 

r

Frankstown Branch follows 22 to Hollidaysburg, that one might be close to needing a warning too. This has probably been the highest QPF event of the winter around here outside of the 1/9 warning snow to 1”+ of rain. Got 1.65” in the gauge with one more wave of rain to get through this eve. 

5 hours ago, Bubbler86 said:

They may need to issue a WSW or Advisory for the Laurels.   Temps may be a reason they do not but might be close.   Several meso's show 4-6" and Nam is around 8". 

Certainly an advisory looks probable there, and possibly some of the other counties in western PA along I-80 outside of the snow belt immediately off of Lake Erie. Temps at elevation in the Laurels look to be plenty cold (falling into the mid 20s Sunday), so snow will likely pile up once it gets going. Once east of the Laurels likely nothing major accum wise, however there could be some potent squalls that traverse the central counties on Sunday. 

With regard to WSW potential, duration is likely a factor in probably not seeing amounts like that in the Laurels outside of the very highest elevations. The back lash event itself looks potent though, with -10 to -12ºC 850mb air coming across the well above average and unfrozen lakes. Couple that with March solar and daytime instability and I think we’ll see some long reaching squalls and potential snow squall warnings especially in the central part of the state as mentioned. Surface temps in the Sus Valley will be warmer but anything stronger that makes it over there will likely crash temps and become snow. 

60ºF was the high here today, mosquitoes are out for blood. 

I don’t usually post snapshots of ops in the long range but might as well throw this one in here with the other maps. 

This is the new AI generated Euro model. I saw the Mid-Atlantic folks sharing this occasionally down there and now WB has put it on their site in the last day or so. So there’s that.. it is nice that it goes all the way out to 360 on all 4 daily runs. Also noteworthy is that it has been very cold in the D10-15, with major negative departures in Canada getting into the northern US. So will be interesting to monitor how this does. Perhaps the AI Euro has “learned” that the 3 out of last 4 winters being garbage winters all produced garbage springs too haha. With two of them (19-20 & 22-23) producing snows in some portion of PA in May and the other one (21-22) with a snow event in the central counties in late April. 

At any rate, ensembles have been clearly showing a major nosedive of the EPO during roughly the 3/13-3/17 period and staying solidly negative for at least several days beyond that. So that period around St Patty’s thru about the 23rd is likely one to watch. This transition of the EPO is pretty well within the ensemble range where there would be some skill in forecasting, so barring any major changes in the near term (possible of course) it would appear this pattern shift will occur despite what the MJO is doing. I think the question will be how much cold air gets involved and how long the -EPO regime lasts. That will have implications on how cold/warm the rest of month into early April is. The MJO pulse is a pretty strong one, but is forecast to move quite rapidly from 4 to 7 pretty much in the next 10 days. So I wonder if it’s influence on our pattern might be tempered a bit by its rapid progression. 

9 minutes ago, Atomixwx said:

Seventy.

70.

S E V E N T Y
E
V
E
N
T
Y

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Only 55 and low overcast here. The valleys are really doing their thing today with the cool air damming. I bet all I’d have to do is drive to the top of Wopsy to get into the sun. 
 

Results are in for my Feb forecast. 

Quote

Michael,

Congratulations on ranking 9 out of 83 participants in WeatherBELL's February Forecast Competition! You've shown impressive skill in long-range weather forecasting, beating 4 out of 7 models and all 6 members of the WeatherBELL team! 

Your total error score over all 12 cities was 54.5°F, with an average error of 4.54°F and an average bias of -4.54°F. You forecasted the correct sign for 7 out of 12 locations, and your best location was "Seattle Tacoma International Airport" with a forecast bias of +1.3°F.

Thanks for participating, and good luck in the April Forecast Competition! Enter your forecasts between Friday, March 15 at 12:00AM ET and Thursday, March 21 at 11:59PM ET at the following link to qualify. https://competition.weatherbell.com/forecast-entry

The WeatherBELL Analytics Team

 

Despite the placing I was still biased way too cold, but part of that is a testament to just how warm the month was. I went +5 at Minneapolis for example and the month finished +12.7ºF.. which is insane.  Happy I opted for doing + departures in the NE/north-central/Ohio Valley stations at least. Final numbers had to be submitted by like Jan 21st, so that was in the middle of the biblical February incoming disco. That was when the MJO was showing signs of being slow with progressing to and beyond 8 and we know how that ended up with the pulse refusing the cold phases. With that I had expected the good pattern to come but delayed, and we just never got it. Expected the southern US to be colder than average with an active southern stream and even there ended up solidly above average.

Which 3 models did better? GEFS extended (2nd), Euro Seasonal (5th)  CANSIPS (6th). GEFS extended only had a total error of 25.8ºF (avg error of 2.15ºF).

Euro weeklies (44th) had a 69.6ºF total error (avg error of 5.8ºF).

1924z-ers, it’s warm. 65ºF here currently. 

6 hours ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

 

ALEET ALEET… The 6z GFS is not listening to the “it’s never gonna snow again” crowd.

Might as well post the maps for next Sunday night just so everyone can dissect why it’s impossible…

 

 

•  

I know you posted this in the neighboring thread as well but our subforum has been actually pretty good with the negativity all things considered. 

1 hour ago, Itstrainingtime said:

This is the most accurate public forum post that you have ever made.

I also mow the grass for both of my neighbors in addition to mine, so my question for the competition committee would be do they count individually? Because that might be the only way I’m competitive since regardless of whatever happens this month.. first mow (aka mulching twigs and branches) usually happens about the second week or so of April around here haha. 

Some pingers with the onset of precip here. 43/22°F

7 hours ago, Atomixwx said:

That Toontown graphic is going to be the Troll signal with only one of those winters listed being outside the last 25 years.

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Speaking of toontown, a picture of this has somehow got WTAJ’s attention of putting up an article of whether or not this was a tornado around dawn yesterday morning.

https://www.wtaj.com/weather/local-weather/photos-was-there-a-tornado-in-altoona/

Blair County has had like 2 actual confirmed tornadoes within the county since 1950 and it shows haha. 

5 hours ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

Yes, please….

A better look by March 12th this run.

 

The problem I continue to see is temps. Here’s the temp departures to go with that timeframe.

I just don’t think we have enough cold air involved in the overall pattern to make the undercutting storm track/below avg 500 heights with anomalously low heights also remaining out west thing work if it were to come to fruition in that fashion. Certainly now since we’ll be approaching mid-March here. Near normal to slightly + temp anomalies at our latitude isn’t going to cut it and would make a scenario to score a winter storm much more difficult. We need to build western ridging (PNA realm), at least temporarily or something to set up an alignment that might draw down enough cold to work with for late season mischief. The latest Euro weeklies try to do that from around St Patty’s day onward with a rapid reversal to ridging up the Pacific coast toward Alaska, resulting in a much better source region and associated cold anomalies that it puts on a large part of the CONUS (week 3 and esp week 4). GEFS extended is also a similar evolution and timeframe (a bit less robust with the cold). I personally think the GEFS extended has done a better job this winter (esp in temps) so seeing some agreement there is probably not a bad thing. Latest MJO evolution is a bit interesting, with forecasts looking to show a pretty strong pulse starting in phase 2/3 and making a run around the ring. Extended ensembles take it around to phases 6 and 7, which are the strongest correlated phases to warmth in the east during FMA.. so that’s a bit a of a discrepancy to work thru. That may make a potential window later in the month to score something much smaller, or the MJO forecasts could continue to evolve differently as well. I’ll be curious to see how things are when we get that period beyond the 15th or so solidly into the regular ensemble range. 

Nice Feb 27th summer night. Fair amount of lightning and thunder (elevated instability) accompanying the wave of precip crossing central PA. Temp here is “only” 48ºF.