TimB

1 minute ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

I'm sorta torn right now between just hoping for a warm early spring and set a top 5 futility season record, or root for a big fluke event. My issue is if it snows again I'll have to start all over in the stages of grief (If you can call it that?) when I feel like now I'm almost to the acceptance stage and ready to move on.

Tracking the good looks that were supposed to be setting in right now for almost a month only to have it fall apart is a real gut punch. As much as I enjoy that part of it, eventually I need some ROI to feel like it was worth it. That week in Jan was great, but if thats all she wrote its really been an awful winter. My bar was its gotta be better than last year, whelp maybe not. 

And that’s what it boils down to. A top 5 futility season would be a lot easier to stomach if we didn’t have something eerily similar last year, in a totally different ENSO base state. Could I be less invested in this hobby? Of course, we all could. But even if I weren’t obsessively watching models or looking at stats showing historic winter warmth or lack of snow, these seasons have been bad enough that even the casuals have to be aware that these past two winters have been epically bad.

30 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

It's gonna be south of us. 

Miss south, next weekend’s storm cuts, another ridge after that, curtains.

18 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

Saturday looks like once again we won’t know until late in the game whether it’s an advisory level event or not.
 

ill say this, I have places to be Saturday morning. I really don’t want a 1-2 event that just annoys me. 

It’s not going to be an advisory type event. At best it’s the 1-2 type thing you mention.

I take that back, there are still a few models like the RGEM that want this to be a low end advisory thing.

We have a long way to go if we have any hope of getting out of the worst 20 or even 10 snowfall seasons. Ignoring the fact that 14 of these top 20 seasons were observed at a different site, we’re looking at 3 of the 5 worst seasons at PIT occurring in the past 5 years unless we get another 10” of snow between now and the end of the season. Still need 5” to even prevent this from being the worst in modern history.

3 minutes ago, Ruin said:

so let me ask this since we were in storm mode yesterday. what happened to that cold stretch every one kept talking about after mid month? they kept saying looks like below average temps going into second half of feb and may linger into march so highs in the lower 30s vs highs near 40 for the average. im looking on forecasts and I see one day at 37 then I even see a few mid 50s popping up next week?

It’s gone. The secret was that there was never going to be an extended cold stretch because those don’t exist anymore.

8 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Central PA doing incredibly well this winter. Harrisburg only a few inches below Erie, and I think outpacing them since the start of meteorological winter.

 

There is not a single location on this list that is at or above normal to date. Pretty sad.

The problem with the weekend storm is there’s not model agreement at this point that the storm will even happen, let alone what areas it would hit, and we’re getting awfully close to the point where that matters.

5 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

I didn't mean just you but I agree. The models have been rough this year. 

We’ll know very soon if the GFS moves away from cutter.

3 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

So much for that super Nino. 

Also I know we've had some terrible luck but I wouldn't give up on this weekend yet. 

I’m not. Same range of possibilities as the current storm at similar range.

4 minutes ago, Rd9108 said:

Is this the most sunshine we have had in January/February? 

Probably. Also, we will be hitting the middle of the month with 0.01” of precip so far at PIT, which is a record for the first half of February. Previous record for that time period was 0.07”.

8 minutes ago, CoraopolisWx said:

Looks like we need another southern trend for Friday night. SMH

On the GFS yeah. The others have suppressed garbage sliding harmlessly south. Unless you count the 0z ICON. It showed a direct hit of warning type snow. Point being there’s still hope for a middle ground solution where it snows here, but I’m just tired of watching models with no results.

And if we’re looking to long-term snow averages at the end of the decade, we’ll already be replacing the 72.1 of 1992-93 with the 17.6 of 2022-23, and now we might be replacing the 76.8 of 1993-94 with like 12-15” in 2023-24. So that’s like a 4” drop in the calculated normals in and of itself, even if the rest of the decade is similar to its 90s counterparts.

It’d almost be better if those elitist NYC fucks didn’t get a win out of this storm while we suffered through two snowless winters in a row.

49 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

I think this winter is done for us 

Afraid so. After a cold and dry weekend, a ridge next week looks very likely, then maybe another trough, then another ridge on the ensembles toward the end of their run and by then it’s a day away from March. This absolutely fucking blows. I can’t believe we had the two worst winters back to back.

Not a drop of precip. Impressive really. Looks like there were even periods of clear skies observed at PIT through the night.

3 minutes ago, Burghblizz said:

I’ve lived that scenario(figuratively), and this isn’t quite that. Dec 2000 and March 2001 in Harrisburg, I lost 3’ of predicted snow at nowcast time. Some of our WTODs had that vibe too

This one always had red flags. I spent a lot of time on it because the modeling was so interesting and would have been a fun threading of the needle. 
 

 

True. This isn’t 1/19/19.

1 hour ago, jwilson said:

On the bright side, at least it was relatively easy to avoid investment into this storm.  Long range it looked like a cutter, then it got borderline for 48 hours but never really looked right, to suppressed mode in another 12 hours.

Imagine a scenario where you and your wife haven’t, well, you know, for two years. You elaborately prepare a fancy date night, buy her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, take her out to a nice restaurant, order and drink a bottle of the finest wine on the menu, then come home and hit the sack. All of a sudden, just as you’re getting ready to do the deed, your drunken neighbor barges through the front door thinking he’s at his house but he’s at yours. That’s what happened with this storm.

Today is day 21 of what will be the warmest 3 week period starting in January that has ever been recorded at Pittsburgh International, and it’s not particularly close. In fact, even if you include the last day or two of the January cold snap in there, it’s still a full degree or two ahead of the 40.3 recorded in 1974. Today should bring the 21-day average to 42.9 or 43.0.

I like how they kept the watch active for 2-4” in the ridges. How can you even justify that?

It’s official. 12z HRRR pitched a shutout. Not a flake of snow for the northern half of the county.

Guess we stay 2.9” behind last year, the worst winter in the modern record, to date.

8 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

This storm was always a long shot, but its starting to look like this "epic" "mint" "awesome" pattern that this storm was just a precursor for is also a brief cold shot, probably similar to the week in January. Nothing we can do, just along for the ride, maybe we get a fluke, or maybe we get an early warm Spring. I'm good with either at this point.

Waiting at least another 10-11 months for an advisory level snowfall when it’s already been two goddamn years simply isn’t palatable to me.

And let’s take a moment to recognize how bad the models are these days, even at very close range. Is that because we’ve rendered our atmosphere unrecognizable by allowing billionaires to take 13 minute private jet flights and pump megatons of carbon into the atmosphere?

Worse yet, NYC gets a win out of these new shifts. Why do the least deserving people always get the good trends when they need them?

All 0z guidance so far pretty much ends the dream. Fuck this hobby.