TimB

5 hours ago, Itstrainingtime said:

My wife spent a week in Tuscaloosa days after 4/27/11 helping clean up efforts. The pictures and video she sent to me were...I don't know. Street after street of nothing but concrete pads. There were areas where there was literally nothing left. 

Unfortunately, it appears we now have a PDS warning for Tuscaloosa. 

7 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

My wife spent a week in Tuscaloosa days after 4/27/11 helping clean up efforts. The pictures and video she sent to me were...I don't know. Street after street of nothing but concrete pads. There were areas where there was literally nothing left. 

Haunting images for sure. Speaking of which, satellite seems to show partial to full clearing over central MS at the moment. Can’t be good.

1 minute ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Yes - hoping for the same result today. I realize that this is part of the drill down there, and I'm not a severe guy by any means, but the dialogue from SPC seems very concerning to me. 

Those that are more “in the know” than I am seem to be saying this won’t be another 4/27/11, but I’m sure people in those areas didn’t wake up that morning with any idea of just how bad that day would be.

10 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

That's an ugly map - hate seeing such a large area under a MDT or HIGH today. I'm afraid there's going to be some devastation over the next 24 hours. 

It’s definitely a concern. But for those that don’t want to see a tornado outbreak in those areas today, the last high risk day (5/20/2019) included a maxed out PDS watch and turned out to be a relatively minor event and no one died.

1 hour ago, Wmsptwx said:

Big severe day coming up in southeast tomorrow!

I’ll bet some of that large moderate risk area gets upgraded to high with the 6z D1 outlook tonight.

18 hours ago, Ahoff said:

Ok...I only care about the snow total at the end of the season.  55" contained mostly between December and February is pretty perfect.  It was a great winter.  My point was, if we get low totals for March, that's just the way it goes, I didn't mean literally that .1" is the only way this could go.

I think .1” is the most likely total we end up with for March. With that being said, it depends on how you grade a winter. Do you look at it as a whole, or do you look at individual months in addition to that whole? I would say I do the latter (and I count all months that average an appreciable amount of snow - Dec. through March), in which December was unquestionably an A+, January was a solid B, February was probably an A, and I would have to say March would unquestionably be an F if it ends at the total we have now. I don’t think I weight March as heavily as the other three, so it only drags an A/A- winter down to a B/B+ in my mind, but it’s hard for me to give a 55” winter an A on the whole, even without looking at individual months, considering we do better than 55” about 20% of the time.

1 hour ago, Ahoff said:

Just the way it goes.  Good thing we got 55” over the winter.

That’s fair. Of course a good winter helps to make up for a low March snow total, but one caveat: a winter with 55 inches or more of snow is much more common than a March with 0.1 inches or less. In fact, if the 0.1” total holds, it will be something that has never been experienced by any Pittsburgher under the age of 75 (which of course means never at KPIT). Hardly “the way it goes” unless you’re an octogenarian.

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.

2 hours ago, Bubbler86 said:

I wish my boxes and boxes of 80's cards were worth what we thought there were going to be.  If I had invested all that money in stocks, I would surely be up a million dollars vs what my 50 Steve Jeltz rookies are worth.

 

 

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

2 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

That's a good question.  It frankly has been like this since I got involved in the early 90's.  There are all kinds of personalities and with it comes all kind of opinions. I think most of us are regular folks...not many CEO's of companies or doctors on here because they are probably too busy (Ha) but lots of regular folks who all have opinions. I would guess there are just as many Dem's and there are Repubs and a lot in between. 

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.)

4 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Do they even realize that not only are they excluding others, but they're also turning off some of their own peeps? How many good people have left down there because of the ugliness. And the worst part is - they honestly don't give a damn.

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?

7 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

Its hard to believe nothing from the S/W PA slug gets over here but HRRR says to keep the umbrella on the shelf.

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.

6 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

First time in 45 years no Duke or Kentucky in the tourney.  I'm holding out hope for a miracle Penn State run in the B10 tourney but we all know where this leads haha.

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. 

2 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

UVA was way down.  Not thinking they defend their title with this team.  LOL.  Michigan is a power house when healthy. 

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.

4 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

Wow, Duke's Basketball Season over due to Covid.  Lots of banter today but that was a shocker. 

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.

3 minutes ago, canderson said:

It’s not an ethics concern, but it’s one less shot for the 80 year old who can’t drive there. It’s unavoidable (without forcing ID checks), but it does skew the original supply. 
 

PA has requested 400,000 vaccines this week and got half of it. But the think next week it’ll be closer. 

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.

8 minutes ago, canderson said:

Yea, indeed. But that skews numbers down the line, especially when looking at both completed. 
 

Things are improving quickly. It doesn’t feel like it, but in two years we’ll look back at how quickly the vaccine ps are administered and be in awe. 
 

The other issue is people skipping the line/lying or a 28 year old in Philly making appointment in Lock Haven - it screws up the algorithm for a bit. 

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.

22 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

I'd be floored if parts of the state received 4 feet of snow over the two weeks.

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... 

26 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Officially the warmest day of the year at 64.

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).

15 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Funny you bring that up, as I was just thinking about those old-time reports.  The only month in which Harrisburg has never recorded snowfall is September.  There were two occasions with a Trace amount in August -- 8/13/93 and 8/28/34.  There are a number of Trace reports for the months of May, June and July (even a .1" from July 1930 and a .2" in June of 1938), mostly from the 1920s through the 1950s.  I often wonder about the record keeping and standards that were in place back then but perhaps that is just my recency bias showing.  One can't help but wonder though if some of those old summer reports from Harrisburg weren't just graupel, hail, etc. that were mistakenly reported as snow.  It's just sooooooo hard to envision snow falling in Harrisburg in July ha.

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.

20 hours ago, Hoosier said:

HRRR even has mid-upper 60s here tomorrow... warmer than other guidance but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it entirely.  Have seen many times when early season warmth overperforms, whether it is due to the lack of vegetation or whatever.

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.