TimB

Central Ohio’s goes into effect tomorrow evening at 0z, so their afternoon shift issued one approximately 48 hours before. Ours wouldn’t go into effect that early.

Kpit does seem to mail it in when it comes to some of its forecast discussions. I’ve lived in two other CWA’s and both have better forecast discussions than most of PIT’s.

I’m not saying them getting raked over the coals for their forecast was unjustified, but I’ll bet the people raking them over the coals didn’t understand what was happening as well as we did. Obviously I wasn’t on this forum then, but I did go back and read that part of the thread and it brought back painful memories.

I would anticipate that from the afternoon shift if it’s going to happen.

I have my theories here, the biggest one being that it seems they’ve gotten a lot more conservative with issuing winter storm watches since the bust of January 2019. I don’t know if getting raked over the coals on social media made them skittish or what. On another note, that late week storm deepens impressively on the GFS as it moves northward, but the track continues to shift west (through Indiana now) and I don’t think this is a snow event for us. That said, it’s depicting significant ice before the warm air reaches the surface. (But it’s back onto the idea of a significant pattern flip toward the end of the month. 64, anybody?)

Not liking the GFS-Para’s track at all.

0z Euro doesn’t bring us a lot of snow for Thursday but I’ll take even the 4” or so that it gives us over the GFS’s rain and 40+. Mon/Tues looks like a Youngstown special but again, 4-8” would be fine.

Agreed. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t complain about 13.4 when it could have been 17.3, but too close for comfort.

Seems it’s trended the first wave stronger and the second weaker.

GFS seems to be onto the Euro’s idea of two rounds of snow, one earlier Monday and then a larger one Monday night/Tuesday morning. Hopefully it has the right idea with the strength of the second round! Looking ahead, the late week storm still seems to be trending east. Still mostly ice/rain on the GFS, but it’s coming into line with a more favorable path for us.

TWC appears to have lowered amounts for the first system but raised them for the second system, and is predicting all snow in the North Hills for both (12-24 total from both storms). Still lots of time to change.

NWS afternoon forecast discussion still not biting on a significant snow event Mon/Tues.

Euro looks a little better, 6” and some zr. And 4” of all snow on the late week system.

The GFS still looks beautiful, massive snowfall rates and dropping 8+ inches on us overnight Monday night.

If we get two back to back that big, we’ll be within striking distance of the record and will have no choice but to root for it. (But the GFS does seem to be hinting at a pattern shift toward the end of its run, but way too early to think about that.)

Interestingly, TWC is liking the later week storm for 6-12” over a 36+ hour period.

True. It was the most recent model to predict that magnitude of cold. On that note, both models put us close to 0 after the Mon/Tues storm and the Euro puts us close to 0 after the Thurs/Fri storm. Para brings subzero cold Wed. AM.

I can’t say I know what model has been superior, they’ve all struggled to get a handle on how this pattern will play out for really the entire month of February so far. I just remember there being a 50 degree swing from one run to the next on the Euro, going from a historic cold snap to temperatures well above freezing. But that was the first run that it picked up the 2/9 system, not several days after it had been painting the exact same picture as the GFS for a number of runs. The Euro did beat the GFS significantly in recognizing that the brutal cold would not reach our area and we would instead lie in that active storm track most of the month. And the GFS did try to give us that monster storm this coming Sunday for a run or two that no other model really bit on.

The Euro did do this with our 2/9 storm 5 or 6 days before, suggesting the system would track way west and pump our temps up close to 50. That didn’t verify.

But that’s the scary part. These models are ~4 days from the onset of precip and depicting completely different scenarios. Not just a little bit different, but completely out of phase with each other.

Euro is wet on Tuesday, GFS is wet on Thursday/Friday. What are the chances we get more rain than snow?

So there is validity to the “0z and 12z are better” argument?

So it’s probably just as valid. I only ask because I liked the 12z’s model of both storms next week better than the 6z and 18z.

So honest question: why do people view the 6z and 18z GFS as less valid than the 0z and 12z?

Ah, so the NWS doesn’t like this pattern for snowfall.