MAG5035

Above post is a quick time-lapse of the severe warned storm I just got right after it passed north.

I haven't seen a legitimate thunderstorm all year around here until an hour ago. That stuff coming towards State College means business. 

4 hours ago, Voyager said:

That's amazing...

Yea I thought that was pretty wild. It makes me wonder what the air quality was like here back in Altoona's Pennsylvania Railroad heyday. 

All the local fireworks backyard and otherwise this evening actually made a noticeable impact on the Air Quality monitor here with the combination of Altoona being in a valley and a bit of a temp inversion with some mostly clear skies and cooling tonight, trapping all the smoke and etc and making it pretty hazy here right now. The PM2.5 really shot up after dark. 

Edit to add a current outside pic (3 sec exposure)

8 hours ago, TimB84 said:

Incredibly, the high of 56 was the first day of 3 in a row in 1972 that didn’t get above 56. The 39 (1992) is the latest 30s on record in Pittsburgh by 11 days and followed a high of 54 the day before.

Fun fact about the run of record low maxes in 1972. That actually occurred during Hurricane Agnes as the tropical system was absorbed by an anomalous trough and associated mid-latitude system over PA. That whole mess sat and spun over us for days, leading of course to all the insane rain totals and flooding. With the historic flooding obviously being the most memorable aspect,  it's not often mentioned how chilly it actually was during most of that event in central PA. 

Nothing major to report around here this afternoon as most of the action has been firing in north-central and southwestern PA. 
 

Do have some nice mammatus clouds downstream of the Pittsburgh storms.

Ended up being under a really localized area of heavy rains first thing this morning. 1.5” estimated over my location and a couple 2”+ spots nearby. 
 

Lol, this is turning into a straight up snow event on the I-80 corridor west of Clearfield. Starting to lay on the highway on top of Rockton Mountain west of Clearfield. 

Got to throw in the May snow pic, since it’s an annual thing now apparently.

Top of Wopsy Mountain

Also some occasional mangled flakes/cat paws down at my elevation as well in heavier precip. 

Snow showing on the 511 cams in some of the Laurels spots.

42 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

There are some possible thundershowers around but surprised to see real hail.  Are we going to count this as snow on May 8th for the second year in a row? 

It's very cold aloft today with 850mb temps a couple degrees below zero, 700mb temps around -10C and 500mb nearly -30ºC over the commonwealth...which is quite significant. Combine that with the strong May sun providing surface heating and instability and that's definitely a recipe for graupel, which would count as frozen. Technically regular hail does too, but I think considering the cold low-mid levels any frozen p-type is probably mostly graupel. Would have to see some pics if anyone gets any decent hail/graupel. 

There was some actual snow in some of the higher Laurel's spots this morning. Not quite the extent of last May's major cold shot, but it's certainly a pretty chilly/unsettled weekend.  

Also, sorry I haven't been posting too much.. I usually get pretty busy in the spring/summer months. 

5 hours ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

I figured as much with the elevational differences out that way.  What are you sittin at anyway?  You may be noticing a theme with me asking everyone their elevation.  I have big problems with topo maps haha.

I sit at approx 1300' here on the NW corner of the city right up against the Allegheny Front. A 4 mile drive up the road out of town gets me to almost 2500'. 

1 hour ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Was just going to ask you how things were out that way, as it looks like some nice cells have been moving through all morning, particularly just to your north.

Yea we had a pretty good blast of snow during the late morning. I just got home here and I was surprised to measure 1.5" on the glass table on my deck. All on grassy and elevated surfaces, this stuff isn't touching any pavement or gravel at this elevation. I'll bet the top of the Allegheny front has advisory amounts on it, I was up in Cambria County early this morning and the higher spots already had snow on the ground presumably from the back end of the main precip changing to snow overnight. Accumulations are pretty elevational and localized down here. 

Pretty snowy this morning.

Downtown Altoona

Since you guys want good old fashioned Easter Week winter weather so bad, sounding the pinger alert here with rain and pellets. 

45 minutes ago, canderson said:

This should be the peak timing - but as windy as it is here @MAG5035 appears to be the winner with lots of 55 mph gusts up that way. 

So far so good here in my immediate neighborhood, but that wind is definitely legit. 

16 minutes ago, canderson said:

The headlines are from 10-6, think the wind dies down before then? 

Possibly, I think the timeframe looks pretty solid. Gusty winds are going to linger into the evening tomorrow but It does appear that late morning-mid afternoon period might be the time of highest gusts.  

3 hours ago, Itstrainingtime said:

A lot of people that know a lot about severe weather seem really concerned for what's about to transpire...

Probably a good thing for us it's early in the spring (and not having diurnal heating given time of the day) because a lot of these same dynamics driving the impending PDS situation in the deep south ride up through PA overnight into tomorrow morning. The NAM actually does briefly inject higher surface dewpoints, high helicity, and some CAPE (mainly 500-800) into eastern PA around daybreak but dry air aloft is already punched in at 700mb and most of the scattered showers/possible storms are lifted north. Seeing this type of a dynamic situation in say, May would likely be a much different story. 

At any rate, the wind situation looks to be a pretty significant deal tomorrow with most of the area easily seeing wind advisory criteria. Guess I'm the lucky one that get's the high wind warning in this situation. I don't often see a high wind warning actually verify here but this is looking like that once in a few years time that it actually does as I'm co-located nearest the best dynamics plus the immediate downslope off the Allegheny Front with the westerly winds. The Euro was through the roof (or blowing the roof away) with wind gusts around here in today's run. 18z 3k NAM coming in isn't quite that nuts but it's close. 

Looks like about 62ºF here this afternoon, which just happened to be the number of inches of snow the 12z GFS had for Denver today (mostly Sun-Tues).

Boy those model and ensemble plots are a sight to behold in that region. 

11 hours ago, mahantango#1 said:

 This is from DT: for NC VA WVA MD DEL PA OH KY IND NJ the Risk of any sort of **SIGNIFICANT Winter Weather*** is done. Yes I know some in VA NC MD did not see real winter / snow.

Now the key phrase is **SIGNIFICANT Winter Weather**. Yes of course between now and say APRIL 1 it will get cold from time to time. Like Duh.....

When I say "SIGNIFICANT Winter Weather" that term refers to SNOW and or ICE chances. If the mountains of WVA or western PA see a snow shower... that really does not count. Also notice here I left out the Great Lakes and New England regions from this. I see no real threat for those areas through March 20 but it is too soon to call it for those areas 

Lol. 

Proclaiming such things north of DC and north of the Ohio River west of the Apps in that group of states is a hot take at best at this point with more than three weeks left in March. And I'm not even super excited about the prospects at the moment beyond acknowledging the warm-up this week is probably an early spring tease (aka "Spring of Deception" in that often shared 12 seasons of *insert state or region here* meme).

I'm personally not really eyeing up individual storm threats that pop up in the long range GFS/Euro quite yet, as I believe we're going to need to get through the warm-up this week to see where the pattern is actually going to evolve... and I think this potential window probably shows up somewhere in the last two weeks of the month if it materializes. Nearest potential bigger thing showing up just before St Patty's Day on the models I feel is actually too early for the potential overall pattern change as NAO/AO still looks quite positive at that stage with lots of low heights over Greenland. 18z GFS evolution of the parent low going west isn't quite ideal this late with core of preceding cold NE of PA and a retreating high. So I think 12z Euro or maybe the 18z ||GFS depending on if there's a retreating high to the NE is probably a better take on something that's still in D7-9 to begin with. There were a couple individual ensemble members on both Euro and GEFS that were cranking out some wild stuff accum wise for that too, likely driving the mean a bit. I mean we could score something there, but I think the general period of interest is after that. 

We definitely look chilly late month but we need more than just a bit below average in the second half of March outside of a one-off thread the needle hail mary. I want to see a more dominant teleconnection signal show up...whether its an -EPO (and/or +PNA), a redevelopment of a stronger -NAO (preferred) or some combination thereof to sign off on a Late March/early April 2018 kind of late season run. Today's 12z Euro control run for instance really built a -NAO with big ridging over Greenland and presented the kind of pattern and strong eastern trough you need to see for a run of late March winter weather. Ensembles look somewhat mixed, showing eastern troughing but not really showing much -NAO (esp GEFS) and some Greenland ridging in the case of the 12 Euro EPS. Both are showing some semblances of an -EPO  which is reflective on the plots (mean is negative in the longer range). MJO plots are stalling near phase 1 or going null right now. We need 2-3 this time of the year for that teleconnection to correlate best to eastern cold. So workable overall but as I said we need something more dominant teleconnection-wise to materialize to have a better chance at scoring from a late season wintry period. 

It looks like we're going to come up dry this week on our best looking nearer term window for anything with respect to the teleconnections, which seems to be approx Mar 4-7. This is where we see the PNA briefly neutralize and the NAO/AO fairly negative. However, the deep 500mb low retro-ing underneath the NAO block to about eastern most Quebec/Labrador and the mean 500mb ridge pressing into the central US puts us on the back end of the trough, which will stuff the progged wave around Mar 6th way south through the SE US and out. The result for us looks like a chilly but relatively quiet week this week before presumably some moderation next week as we flip the NAO/AO positive and PNA negative again. 

As was just posted above with the MJO, we could have a run through phase 2-3 eventually later this month. FMA temp anomalies have a pretty strong correlation to NE/Great Lakes cold in those two phases, so if that were to come to fruition we could conceivably see a favorable period materialize 2nd half of the month.. especially with seasonal shortening of wavelengths and amplification. Im generally ready for warmer spring-like weather after about March 15th or so unless it's a go big or go home situation, so I'd hope we can see a late March/early April 2018 type deal if it's going to be colder than average and unsettled the back half of the month. Either way, I don't really see any real northeastern spring fling breakouts right now. 

I got grass showing by the tree line edge of my property, fortunately it’s on the neighbor’s side lol.

It’s def warm. KAOO at 54°F but the local meso obs in town are near 60°F

Some definite shrinkage in the pack today with the brisk winds, some sun, and temps gettin into the low-mid 40s. 

Catching the height of the snowpack. Temps are above freezing and winds have kicked up.