TimB

1 hour ago, Ahoff said:

I’m not worried as much about that.  I just don’t want rain if they get 10” of snow.  It’s just be weird.

Wouldn’t say I’m worried about that, it just speaks to the magnitude of the cold air. Subzero in Dallas has only happened four times in recorded history.

26 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

I will say despite how great this winter has been, if Dallas gets a lot of snow and cold and we get rain from the same storm I will be pissed, lol!

Subzero cold seems to possibly be in the cards for Dallas...

6 minutes ago, jwilson said:

For next week - the setup I had been eyeing - don't worry too much about the thermal profiles right now.  The bigger issue is the ridge and trough positioning.  The ridge axis is way too far west which incidentally leads to troughing in the central U.S.  Less than ideal.

The GFS phases the northern and southern streams and that's why it cuts.  It probably underestimates the arctic lobe up north, but I'm still not sure how these two elements would interact.  The CMC keeps the wave open and positively tilted.  It moves very quickly because of the overall context.

There's still potential here.  The speed of the pattern remains a problem in terms of maximizing that potential.  Maybe we can simply push the best potential back and not lose it totally.  TBD.  We do have incoming PNA and AO spikes that might portend something.

So the setup you’re seeing continues to leave cold air entrenched over our area for most precipitation that falls to be snow?

1 minute ago, Rd9108 said:

I'm out on that. I already almost totaled my car on Christmas. 

Ouch. I suppose I’d probably be of a similar opinion in any other winter. But I physically can’t slip and fall on ice and break my neck or wreck my car on an icy road on my way down the stairs to my basement office.

5 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

The Monday night into Tuesday storm Euro is showing about .7 qpf, but it all falls with 2m temperature between 17-26 degrees. Verbatim it would be snow to sleet to freezing rain, and it would be legit freezing rain at those temperatures especially when you consider the ground will already be well below freezing with snow cover and its happening very early morning.  I'm not a big ice storm fan, but if your going to do it.. do it right lol

 

I would take an ice storm over 40 and rainy ten times out of ten.

12z Euro seems to pick up both systems next week. Both a little warmer than I’d like to see, but lots of time!

Regarding what I said earlier about this year vs. 1992-93, all it takes at this point is one big event to be on the cusp of history. This run of the GFS gives us that, and if it somehow verifies verbatim (unlikely, but possible) we would be sitting at 76 inches (6 short of the record) before the end of February.

GFS then puts another system through our area late week.

1 minute ago, north pgh said:

That's okay. 5 days away. Don't want to be in the bullseye. Hard to believe with this cold that the low would take that kind of cutter track. Lot's of time and would rather have the low to move east for us than west. Tonight is looking more like a 2-3 inches of snow in a 6 hour window. I think we will all take it.

Historic snowfall in places like Arkansas with that track. 18” in some areas. We need a shift!

21 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

It will depend on what layer(s) of the atmosphere go above freezing. This graphic helps visualize it:

So even if the 2M temperature is 17 you could still see sleet or freezing rain if there is a warm nose somewhere in the column. A lot goes into this though, say you have a high to the north funneling in low dew point air, during heavy precipitation maybe you can wet bulb the column to 0 and get all snow, then during lulls you get drizzle / sleet. There are a lot of variables that go into figuring out p-type and snow ratios. You can't just say it's 20 degrees so ratios will be 15:1 (Not saying this is what you were implying just pointing it out.)

This may be anecdotal and obscure, but does anyone remember the January 1999 snow/ice storm? My memory tells me we had sleet/FZRA with temperatures not too far from 17. 

13 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

By the same metric we could question January 1977 at around an 11 degree average, as the coldest month of all time by around 6 degrees.  Now there are people who can corroborate that as many were alive then, and it is an actual temperature.  How do we know September 1881 wasn't that warm?  We've seen very warm Septembers, maybe that was on steriods.  It can happen.  Plus that September recorded a few 100 degree days, which has never happened since, oh except in 1884.

I also find it interesting that it seems we don't see highs that are as extreme as they used to be.  Looking through the records it seems years ago we had yearly maxes that were vhigher than today.  Taking each decade since 1940 Most are relatively close, with the 40s having the highest decadal mean high at 95, the 2000s are the lowest at 91.  The last decade (2010s) was 93.  40s were 95, 50s were 94, 60s were 94, 70s were 92, 80s were 94, 90s were 94, 00s were 91 and 10s were 93.  While they're all close, as averages it seems significant that our highs don't seem to be getting quite as high as they used to.

Those summertime highs are an interesting trend for sure. It’s a lot more intricate than the fact that we’re getting warmer overall. I wasn’t alive in 1977 but I don’t question it because it was taken at the same site and probably with similar methods to observations taken today.

I’m not sure of the official position of the NWS or others who study meteorology for a living on the older data or its accuracy, but I do know this. People on both sides of the aisle have politicized the non-political, scientific issue of climate change. As a result, even if the NWS did a quality control study and determined that the old data to be inaccurate, and put an asterisk next to it in the records, there would be an uproar about “artificially manufacturing or overstating climate change” or even “trying to rewrite history,” even if their reasons for doing so were legitimate. Therefore, the older data is here to stay. With that being said, we’re all free to use whatever data we want to come to whatever conclusion we like. I just choose to only use data from 1948 on because they’re the only numbers that I feel can give me an accurate comparison.

9 hours ago, Ahoff said:

Just out of curiosity, how much warmer do we think the City of Pittsburgh (somewhere in the city limits but not downtown) would be vs. KPIT?  The weather app on my phone shows a difference from my location (in the city) and KPIT mostly of 2 degrees.

So, do we really think those records from the 1880s and 1890s or even the early 1900s would be that much different at the airport?  I mean the City wasn't hugely built up then, and even if it were 2 degrees different, many of those records would still be standing.

It’s an interesting discussion, to be sure. But the only way to discuss the warmth of the past few years is to compare it to data where it can be compared apples to apples, which unfortunately only goes back to 1948. And 8 months now have recorded a higher average at some point last decade than they ever did in the 60+ years preceding that.

In addition to the site where the measurements were taken, I’m going to take an educated guess that there are differences in how they were taken (technology, methods, etc.). Just as an example, I can’t be the only one who thinks that the 77.2 average for September 1881, five degrees higher than any other September, is more than a little suspect. As such, I can’t compare records set in 1881 to observations taken today. Not sure if folks are generally in agreement with this or not.

8 hours ago, Mailman said:

0z GFS seems as though it's gonna deliver the goods again.

But 6z GFS comes into agreement with 0z Euro that the Tuesday storm will be mostly rain/ice with very little snow. Hopefully the cold air can stand its ground.

1 hour ago, KPITSnow said:

Anecdotally, I feel that this summer was one of the most brutally hot I remember, and until this year I felt that we kept 50-60 degree temps consistently through December.

alberta clippers and LES used to be staples in the fall months but have disappeared. When is the last time we had a true clipper?

July 2020 was the hottest July and second hottest month (just behind Aug. 1995) ever recorded in Pittsburgh since observations moved to Pittsburgh International in 1948.

Feb. 2017 and 2018 are the two hottest Februarys ever recorded at Pittsburgh International.

March 2012. April 2017. May 2018. Sept. 2018 and 2015. Nov. 2015. Dec. 2015. All hottest of said month ever recorded at Pgh International. In other words, in 73 years of records being kept at PIT, eight of the twelve months of the year have been the hottest on record in just 9 years.

1 hour ago, Ahoff said:

I disagree, if we look at climate change we are looking at anomolous warmth in the Artic, that warmth is displacing cold, and it has to go somewhere.  The bulk of this season it has been stationed over Siberia into Europe, an area that was very warm last winter.  Siberia had one of its coldest Decembers ever.  That artic cold does continue to drop down, just hasn't visited here since 2019, heck it's only in the midwest not too far away.  Will it visit this year, maybe, maybe not?  But this did not define whether the winter was a winner or not.

In winter, yes, absolutely 100% correct. And I also fully agree that we have had a fantastic winter compared to the last five or so.

I suppose my comments regarding periods of anomalous cold being exceedingly rare these days are not directed specifically to winter but rather to any time of the year. For example, we are currently at 8 consecutive months of above normal temperatures at PIT (which wouldn’t be alarming on its own, other than the fact that it’s part of a trend which includes a period of 18 consecutive months within the past few years). When was the last time we had even four consecutive below normal months? But that’s another topic for another day, as it distracts from the matter at hand, which is seeing just how high our snow total for this winter can go. 

4 minutes ago, Mailman said:

GFS coming in hot D6.

We have some model agreement! (Though the GFS is almost certainly too cold with that system, QPF looks good for our area on both models).

21 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

That’s the point, these models have flipped back and forth each day.  One shows brutal cold one day while the other shows regular cold, then they reverse.  We’ll see what happens, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t go below 0, or below 8 or whatever.  It will again at some point, if it isn’t this year it will be another year.  It’s been a great winter regardless.

I fully agree with that. A few good snowfalls will do a lot to boost my spirits. I think it’s really just that unseasonably cold periods are fewer and farther between than they used to be in this warming world (and I don’t say that in a partisan way, as climate change is not a political concept, it’s a scientific one), so it excites me when such anomalous cold is hinted at by the models.

With that being said, I think we probably end up in the low single digits either above or below zero Monday morning, which is just fine and dandy with me.

13 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Yesterday there were a few runs where the Euro was bringing in well below 0 weather.  I saw -12 one run and -18 in another.

Yes, this is a reversal from yesterday. The 0z Euro yesterday had us at -18 Monday morning while the GFS had us at +12. Now the GFS has us at -13 and the Euro has us at +4.

The biggest problem I see is that the GFS is taking us to -13 almost entirely on CAA, with clouds sticking around that whole night.

Regardless, that is the only morning that has a chance at bottoming out below zero in this pattern. The models have been out of phase all month, save for maybe that time early last week they both agreed we’d be bottoming out around -10 yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and both were of course wrong.

NWS forecasting 2-4 inches in Allegheny County from the Wed-Fri event.

Also, even if you take out the Blizzard of ‘93, that winter got about 29 inches from Feb. 10th on. That would put us very close to ‘09-10 for #3.

15 minutes ago, dj3 said:

Yep, at least it would be a pack maintainer since we avoid plain rain. Also it looks like its loading up a storm for the 16th-17th like the Euro

The Arctic high seems to squash our storm track in that solution. Still a lot of time for that to resolve.

Of course, the first step is that the storm has to exist, even if it’s currently depicted as spreading a wintry mix across NC/SC.

5 minutes ago, dj3 said:

GFS looks like it made a move toward the European on the weekend event. Gives a colder outcome but the system looks more disorganized. 

Looks like it could still give us a few inches of snow, and pours in the bitter cold behind it just like the Euro. Bottom line seems to be we’re still very much in the game for a subzero night this winter. 

3 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

What a winter. We even had a white Christmas!!

The whitest Christmas ever, in fact!

8 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Then a once in a lifetime storm struck. 

Indeed, it’s not reasonable to expect a storm of that magnitude, but at this point, even something like the President’s Day 2003 storm would at least make it not crazy to start thinking about catching some of those epic years.

Also: our season-to-date total through today’s date in 1993 was 19.3 inches.

8 hours ago, Burghblizz said:

Really goes to show you what a huge factor rates are. This came in thumpin 

Those early rates were truly impressive. Slept a lot better knowing based on early indications that we would wake up to the 5” the NWS predicted.

Looking ahead: the GFS warm-sectors us to death with its Sunday storm and the Euro still doesn’t really give us anything there, but its depiction of the Tues-Wed system is looking pretty fun. GFS slides it south of our area but at least carries a decent system somewhere.