TimB

Compare that to this March, where if the models are correct, we have a very good shot at finishing the month with only the fluke 0.1” we recorded on the 1st.

That’s my Buccos, putting up a 10-spot in the top of the first and still finding a way to lose!

I would guess that’s a fair assumption. I certainly deem myself to be a “regular person.” On a weather forum I’m a weather enthusiast first and have no desire to engage in political debate. (I don’t think the one main “political” issue related to weather is really a political issue, it’s a scientific one.)

At the end of the day, it’s a weather forum. I understand banter, but maybe not divisive topics? As a lifelong weather enthusiast who is very new to discussing it on forums, it does raise my curiosity - does the weather enthusiast community lean one way or the other politically or is it mixed?

HRRR several hours ago indicated the same general idea in Pittsburgh, with partial clearing and temperatures reaching 74 this afternoon. I can assure you, it’s 58 and rainy here and never got past 63.

Covid rudely closed Penn State’s window last year. As an alum of another Big Ten school that was better last year than they are this year, I can commiserate - though a PSU win tonight would add to my misery.

Not every year the Big Ten has four legitimate national title contenders. Edit: Three. Didn’t realize Ohio State went into a tailspin down the stretch, though that pleases me.

Wonder if they would have done the same if they were 1st in the ACC and national title contenders rather than a 10th place in the ACC bubble team. As I recall, however, last year at this time before everything got shut down, they were already talking about not playing in the tournament. So Duke errs on the side of caution.

I also know of people who have flat out lied about being 1A, and they are monsters. But this is a tough topic. I would argue that more densely populated counties have much more risk of covid spread and that they should be prioritized over rural counties in the rollout, but that’s also up for debate.

Here’s a point open for debate on that matter. Someone I know in Pittsburgh went to a county in NW PA to get the vaccine because they qualified as 1A (under 40, obese but not morbidly so) because the rollout has been slow in Allegheny County. I don’t see that as an ethics concern, but maybe others do. That said, the fact that any Pennsylvanians, let alone nearly 1 in 10, are vaccinated on the anniversary of the pandemic is incredibly impressive.

If it’s okay for a Western PA person to barge in here, I would note that 5th in vaccines given should be expected as the bare minimum for a state that is 5th in population as we are.

HRRR is an outlier but has performed well with these warm stretches, and suggests we could get to 74 today. Satellite shows broken clouds upstream over Ohio. I think we sneak past 70 this afternoon. Edit: bust! No breaks in the clouds to be found.

I second that, considering almost all of that is in the last 48 hours of the GFS’s run and isn’t continued in the 6z (and even if it were consistently in the model every day for the next week, we’d still be a week out). It’s for entertainment purposes only at this point. That said, it’s certainly more entertaining to me to watch the GFS pile 4 feet of snow on St. Marys, PA than it is to watch the GFS pile 4 feet of snow on Denver.

Looks like 70 will have to wait, at least officially at KPIT. KAGC and many other sites in western PA hit 70 yesterday. We do have a solid shot at a daily record warm low depending on where we stand at 11:59 this evening. I’d be remiss not to include this...

Also this morning’s low of 45 officially ends the streak of days with a low temperature of 37 or lower at 101 days (3rd all time).

Definitely hail on the 1993 occasion. High of 86, low of 65 with 1.86” of rain.

You look familiar, do I know you from somewhere? Oh right, we’ve become quite well acquainted with this pattern over the past several years.

This is entirely accurate, for whatever reason. This may be anecdotal or empirical, but having lived nearly my entire life (aside from a few years out west) in either the Ohio Valley or Upper Midwest - yes, I consider Pittsburgh the Ohio Valley because it technically is - it seems like when we’re talking about the first time in a calendar year to hit a temperature milestone (50, 60, 70, 80), especially in a pattern flip from cold to warm, a large number of those have occurred on days when temperatures outperformed most to all forecasts and model guidance.

Ah yes, this one. Maybe the 0z run will continue to show this Day 14 storm. Or maybe the 0z run will have us at 75 and sunny that day. Both are (equally?) possible. That said, the Para does have extreme anomalous cold in the same timeframe, just without the storm. We’ll find out soon. Edit: all runs of today’s GFS and Para are not our friend on this. Extrapolating the Euro, it still seems possible. Even that seems questionable. But I think a snowfall that week is probably more likely than 75 and sunny at this point. Perhaps we’ll even see both with this tug of war between warm and cold. Despite this waffling of the models, NWS CPC has below normal temps for all but the far southeast US and above normal precip for the east in the 8-14 day range. Doesn’t look like they’re putting much confidence in it either though. I’ll bet we run a couple degrees either above or below average for the 3/15-3/21 period, with an inch or two of wet snow somewhere in there to pad the stats.

“At this range”... a D14 storm could probably have a bullseye over Des Moines or Charlotte or anywhere in between and have a fairly equal likelihood of bringing “the big one” to PA.

Meh. We have 7 warm months after March before it gets cold again (maybe 8, depending on what November does - and yes, I would say that April and October are warm months - though I’m open to differences in opinion on that). That’s plenty for me. Also, I’ll take snow any day and month of the year we can get it, even if that means recording a trace in May like last year. Winter doesn’t last forever, but summer always seems to drag on forever. Maybe because it actually has the past several years - September has been a summer month every year in recent memory and you could say the same for May if you throw out the first half of the month last year.

I think a warm up next week is a fair compromise if we get the cold, stormy pattern the following week. Flow looks too zonal at that point though, so not counting on much.

I would argue that understanding the difference between a watch, warning, and advisory is a much more basic level of understanding meteorology than knowing the meaning of terms frequently used in area forecast discussions or being able to read maps generated by a weather model, and that in general, it’s probably necessary and not hard at all for any member of the general public to understand the difference between the three. Instead of dumbing the message down to suit the public, maybe expect that people educate themselves on what three very basic terms mean.

Some bonus snow flurries this afternoon - even if it’s a trace, “days it snowed” is now winning 71-53 against “days it didn’t snow” since Nov. 1.

Admittedly, I’m looking at this through the clouded lens of being on the cusp of turning a good-to-great winter into a truly memorable winter but spring had to go and show up early, and that’s a much better position to be in than last year, when winter blasted through the door here in early November, pulled a disappearing act for six months and came back for the first half of May when it was too late.