TimB

So there we have it. An inch and a half of snow from the first wave, almost half an inch of ice from the second wave, and it all melts and then some when temperatures rise into the mid to upper 30s Tuesday morning, if the NAM proves to be correct. Won’t sensationalize and say take down the watch this time because that amount of ice is no joke.

Yeah, remember when the models thought we’d wake up to -19 this morning?

Half an inch of ice and not one flake of snow in the second wave? And the track of the low has officially entered Ohio. Forget about a Youngstown special, this is a Fort Wayne special.

They’re also under a wind chill warning because “wind chills may fall below zero.” We’re now up to 47 states that have an active watch/warning/advisory for either snow or cold, and 18 of those are for the entire state.

In Pgh itself. NW half of the county is still yellow. But the map also shows a not insignificant 0.11” of ice, which would usually be mentioned in the watch? Also of note: the GFS actually gives us less snow with the Mon-Tues storm than it does with the Thurs storm. And that, despite the fact that it’s showing 3/4” of zr on Thursday.

NWS did downgrade the watch to 4-7 with 0.1-0.2 of ice, but now they’ve gone back to 6-8 with no mention of ice. But they still have ice in the point and click. Odd that they wouldn’t put it in the watch.

No offense taken. Perspective is important, and this has been a solid winter, with snow cover for long periods of time and that simply hasn’t happened in recent memory. At this point, the only question to be answered depending on how the rest of the season plays out is “will it be a good winter, a great winter, or a historic winter?” And I think we only need a little more snow the rest of the way to move from the “good” category to the “great” category. But if not, we still got a good winter and it’s been awhile since we’ve had one (I don’t count 2017-2018, despite a high snow total.) I will dial back the complaining.

A little, yes. This hobby doesn’t suck, it’s no different than being a sports fan or anything like that. There are a lot of punches to the gut, tonight included, but it provides a great deal of enjoyment.

They don’t fret about it. I lived in a location where the only two ptypes that regularly occurred were rain and snow, and mostly snow at that, and it was fantastic. Got to experience a record snow season while I was there, and it shattered the previous record by over two feet. But Pittsburgh is home and I wouldn’t change that.

There we have it. Another storm, another chance for the models to get our hopes up, and another 0z run that makes us go to bed disappointed. This hobby sucks.

This. I would 100% believe this is just a one off if the 18z GFS didn’t show the exact same trend. Whether or not you can dismiss it as “it’s just the 18z” depends on who you ask, it seems. Of course, we will have an answer to that in an hour or so.

Even with the GFS already showing it? Edit: I suppose the GFS still implies 7 inches of snow, so it’s not necessarily “showing it.”

I’m still not suggesting this storm will be anything like that one (for one, I don’t think there’s much if any chance of plain rain, let alone a prolonged period of it, with this one), but I’m starting to think we end up with similar snow totals to that storm.

Yeah, that is a pretty significant change in one run this close. Hopefully the NAM isn't on to something. GFS and Euro will be interesting. 18z GFS, (if you believe in its validity), has already picked up this trend.

That’s two models that screw us now. We know how this ends.

Oh I agree. I wasn’t suggesting that this storm will be similar to that one, I was saying Ron Smiley was one of the few that was right on that one and expressing optimism that he’ll be right on this one.

Smiley hit the nail on the head with, yes, the infamous 2019 storm yet again. (Image below is for the 2019 storm about 48 hours out). I think he lowered a little further in the mix zone the next day.

Rationally speaking, you’re correct. This run also shifted the Thursday storm back into a still not great location for us but at least not running the low through Indianapolis so we get snow instead of ice before the warm air blasts in, so we actually end up with similar snow totals for the week before the thaw Thursday night.

Ah yes, the old adage of the 18z models again. It may or may not be true, but at least it allows us to hold off on disappointment for 6 hours.

True. The NAM ticked about 500 yards to the SE with its 18z run. Even so, we should probably go on the record and issue a Youngstown special warning.

ZL here as well. Speaking of snowpack, depending on how this week plays out, would a large snowpack mute/slow down the effects of the pattern flip that is seemingly becoming more likely at the end of the month?

So the NWS is forecasting 7” of snow in Pittsburgh with a 1% chance of 8” or more? (8” at the airport with a 12% chance of 8” or more.) Something has to give. Essentially they’re issuing a watch saying “Allegheny County will likely receive 6-9 inches of snowfall” but their probabilities say it is very unlikely that most locations in the county will receive 8 inches. At the end of the day, winter storm watch/warning criteria are 8 inches in 24 hours, correct? The question basically boils down to, do you issue a winter storm watch for an area when the chance of that area meeting warning criteria is somewhere from 1-10%? Alternatively, the messaging essentially reads “we don’t believe Allegheny County will meet warning criteria, but quite a few models say it will, so we’re going to issue a watch to cover ourselves in case it does happen.” The stakes are low when issuing a watch because you can always downgrade to an advisory.

NWS now has all of Allegheny County in the 6-8 range.

I would be surprised if it’s happened in the past 30 years. I think the cold snap of late 2017-early 2018 had a massive part of the CONUS under advisories/warnings for snow and cold, but most of that was wind chill warnings and not snow/ice.

NWS’s national watch/warning/advisory map is about as wild as it gets.