TimB

I don’t know where any weather app or otherwise is getting the idea that this will be all snow anywhere in Allegheny County. With that being said, this is not met bashing in the slightest. Many of us have performance reviews in our jobs, and it’s certainly the case that in a government-run bureaucracy like NOAA, there would have to be some level of performance accountability when it comes to the NWS. Not that they can’t get a forecast wrong, as surely it’s obvious that there is a lot more uncertainty in what they do for a living than what most of the rest of us do. But maybe one of the performance indicators is “how many times did X forecast office issue a warning and have to downgrade it to an advisory (or vice versa)?” If you can keep it a warning, even if it’s marginal, then it keeps your office from getting dinged when it gets audited by the higher ups, who don’t necessarily care that there is way more forecast uncertainty in a place like Pittsburgh than there is in, say, Phoenix. After all, a NWS forecast office did once get reprimanded for something as arbitrary as correcting erroneous information provided by a political figure on the track and impact of a hurricane.

Instead, they’ve left the 3-6” intact and still 0.1-0.2 of ice, despite many model runs to the contrary between the initial warning and the recent update.

No former name on here, actually. Just thinking about warning criteria, and usually when 2” of snow and 0.1-0.2” of ice are expected, an advisory is issued. Does already having issued a warning change that thought process?

Aren’t the WSW criteria for ice 1/4” or more? Do we legitimately think we get there?

So at what point does the NWS downgrade our warning to an advisory? 4 hrs after precip onset?

I was this kid too. Go to bed with them predicting 6-8 inches of snow, thinking school would be closed and then waking up to rain and disappointment.

The Thursday system still looks better for snow. GFS wants to give us 5” and half an inch of ice still and drag the low right across our area. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Wait, they issued a graphic at 1:23 and another less than a half hour later?

That cutoff would give us a pretty nice “official” total, though the vast majority of folks would see far less than what goes into the record books. The NWS trended amounts down as they should have, but non-weather enthusiasts who only use things like TWC to know what the weather will be like are being misled to believe they’ll get 6-12” of all snow (up from an earlier forecast of 4-8), even in places like the South Hills.

I don’t want trees snapping and power outages, lol. Edit: I guess power outages would give me a day off of work, but pretty sure that’s just a waste of a day of leave.

Even falling onto cold ground/snow after a week plus of being below freezing at the sfc?

Aside from the NAM, most models do keep the vast majority of precip frozen (to the extent that freezing rain is “frozen”). But the ice storm threat is increasing. What product will the NWS issue? I would think a warning rather than an advisory for 2-6” of snow SE to NW and a much higher risk of 0.25” ice.

Or the GFS could push the low back through Indy like it did yesterday, or it could keep shifting east. Way too many options.

GFS keeps trending East with the later system, rams the low directly through our area. Could be interesting.

That was a memorable cold snap. I guess my memory immediately went to the 10+ inches we received in late March that melted almost as quickly as it fell, and yes, the snow in April, which inflated our totals a little. That was one of the longest cold snaps in recent memory, and I remember shoveling snow in brutal cold.

I agree. ‘17-18 comes to mind for a season with a high total but wasn’t a real winter.

Well the 12z HRRR certainly didn’t go in our favor either... NWS will keep the watch intact, as is, until they issue an advisory this afternoon for 2-4” of snow and up to 0.1” of ice.

I think that’s an undeniable fact, with one caveat. If this snow season ends with the 49.7 inches we’ve had so far, and nothing more (unlikely, as it’s almost certain we’ll get at least a little more), I would classify that as a good but not necessarily “great” season. If that’s the final season total, it’s slightly above average. To use a sports analogy, if you will, a snow season with 49.7” would be like a Steelers season where they go 11-5 and win one playoff game before getting eliminated (certainly better than recent years, but “good, not great.”)

So from an information and knowledge standpoint, how does the NAM usually do at this juncture? Does it typically run warm? Cold? I’m not all that well versed in the NAM.

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.