TimB

Thunder snow and 11 degrees? I wonder if those conditions have ever been reported in Pittsburgh in 150+ years of record keeping.

GFS wants to bring a massive ridge to start met spring. Could you imagine a third snowless March in a row?

GFS appears to be the last domino to fall. Massive ridge develops mid to late next week in what was supposed to be a good cold pattern, bringing it into agreement with pretty much all the rest of the operational and ensemble models. Unbelievable. Why is it that even when most indicators and teleconnections would support a cold pattern, the models can flip this fast and converge on the solution of a warm pattern? Is it climate change? Something else? It’s frustrating as hell how hard it is to get a good pattern these days.

It’s just unbelievable how quick the models turned a largely BN period into a largely AN period. If the EC is right, we’ll be back in the upper 40s by Monday, which all the other models suggest should be a cold day.

You’re right, it didn’t belong in this thread, there’s a complaint thread for a reason. But yeah, these all day rainy days make me grouchy as all hell even in July and even more so during months when it should be snow.

And there it is…

You only get 3 months where you can reasonably expect to get any appreciable snowfall, and two of them were complete and total garbage this year. Despite a rockin’ January, our only hope to even get to normal snowfall for the season is a 1993 redux in March.

NWS mentions the possibility of isolated thunderstorms today in their discussion. Might be the only game in town as far as interesting weather for the balance of February.

Would think it would be MUCH more useful in Celsius, as zero actually means something and isn’t an arbitrary point on a scale.

No, you’re correct for sure. Signed zero in weather is definitely a matter of whether the unrounded number is positive or negative.

^This. You see negative zeroes in things like 5-min obs that do that Fahrenheit to Celsius to Fahrenheit thing, as -18C = -0.4F which shows up as -0 on there.

You’re in luck. In an almost comical fashion, next week, which was looking cold, is now looking warmer with temperatures popping back up close to 50 by midweek.

I guess that’s more my point. If you take every February that finished near normal on temps, this one was probably near or at the bottom as far as being a quality winter month.

Maybe we can have another top 5 wettest year after just a couple years break.

Any winter month where the vast majority of precip falls as rain is a torch.

A winter month that is going to end up close to normal temperatures with double the normal precip, 90% of which fell as rain, is a terrible waste of precip as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah, for a February that will likely end up pretty darn close to or just slightly above normal temp-wise, it’s likely going to be remembered as a torchy rain fest.

PIT is already sitting at 3.42” of precip for February, and I expect that number to be north of 5 by the end of the week. About a half inch of that has been liquid equivalent of snow.

0z GFS: 1.2” QPF from the late week event, 0.13” zr, 0.5” snow, approximately a full inch of precip wasted on rain.

These days, we get more February rain than liquid equivalent of February snow.

Look for those ice accumulations to go away over the next day or two as well. We’re going to waste yet another inch plus of February precipitation on plain rain.

NWS seems to know how this late week system plays out, much to our disappointment: The NAM/NAM3k has done historically well with the temperature-profiles with systems like this, so that`ll be something to pay close attention to when it gets within forecast range (84/60hrs). Hint: warmer air aloft always wins.

18z GFS continues to weenie us in:

I’m with you. If this isn’t another complete waste of a whole bunch of qpf, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Who knows. The EC is ugly and gives us zero snow and almost all rain, so anything can happen.