jwilson

Pretty amazing run there from last night, but it's the GFS' unserious interpretation at 200+ hours. If you show that under 48 hours with support, I'll get interested. The long-term model depictions keep wanting to inflate the southern stream moisture involvement. Thus far through winter we haven't really seen that, so it's hard to trust. We'll have some rain transition to snow tonight with lingering bands, then another chance on Friday & Saturday for snow showers as an upper-level low passes overhead.

The potent combination of -AO/+PNA/-EPO is creating quite the cliff for cold air to jump off of and into the Eastern trough. Should have plenty of cold in the short-term (after tomorrow). Too much can wring out the moisture, of course, but the active northern stream Nina keeps energy moving. At minimum it offers mood flakes.

I don't disagree, but at least publicly, realizing it's not necessarily honesty, players seem to like him. I don't think there's any way they can justify keeping him as OC. That bridge was burned this season. If he gets demoted back to passing game coordinator, it's a compromise. But the passing game has never been great during his tenure. That said, the offense was never built for prolific passing statistics, either, being run-first plus possession, so it's kind of a wash. Correlation vs. causation is hard to determine. Eagles definitely need to draft one, I agree. Calcaterra is a terrible blocker, so I don't love the idea of going into next season with him as #1, and I kind of don't like how the team keeps overusing him in running formations given how poorly he executes. For those reasons I'd prefer if the team moved on from him. If the coaches could use him more responsibly as a receiver, I wouldn't care. Dallas is also degrading as a blocker, so either way the Eagles need a true or more capable blocking TE.

Lurie is a measured guy. I think if they end up firing KP, it will take some time to do exit interviews and all that, including perhaps assessing player attitudes. It might also require assessing Sirianni, himself. I don't think he should or will be fired, but this might be another test of submission. There's also a chance KP sticks around to appease Sirianni but gets a demotion. I don't know if this is exactly the same situation as what happened to Doug. My instinct was that it feels the same, and if Sirianni is going to fall on the loyalty sword, the Eagles would can him, too, but maybe they won't be as hasty to relive that same scenario. There were lots of problems with player execution this year, and perhaps the front office thinks the regression from the offensive line was more problematic than the overall scheme. Maybe they think KP can improve with more guidance. I wouldn't necessarily agree with either of those opinions, but they do have more information about what goes on behind the scenes. Either way there will be changes of some kind. The offense is too expensive to be this bad. I know the lack of running Jalen is to help preserve his health, but I question whether trying to turn him into a pure pocket passer when the run game is flailing will work. However, given how deficient the passing scheme is, it's hard to tell what is more problematic. I'm kind of on the "trade Brown" train because I think he's a declining player moreso than any other reason, but his contract may force the Eagles to keep him around at least one more season. Maybe a new OC helps him, too. They don't yet have a receiver to replace him, either, and will possibly lose their best TE also without a ready replacement. Maybe Dallas signs another one-year deal. He probably wants more security, at this point.

Difficult to buy into anything right now. Mid-range modeling has been suspect for a few months. Long-range is worth even less. I'm not too worried about individual threats until they close within three-to-five days. The best we might hope for is a return to the December clipper-heavy pattern. I think it is possible, if not probable, that the worst of our winter cold is over with, however. Height anomalies over Canada don't look quite as robustly cold as they were a month ago, and a massive building -EPO coupled with +PNA might reconfigure how cold air gets moved through the CONUS. A huge ridge out west precludes cold air from coming at us in a westerly fashion and retains a more northern component. The ridge does create opportunities for storms to ride down the spine and amplify south of us, but the speed of the northern stream combined with a lack of blocking really caps any potential. Even a big coastal would move in a hurry absent additional variables that aren't yet clear. The combination is a somewhat typical Nina atmosphere. Not to say the rest of winter will be warm, only that it is more moderate than what we dealt with previously with quite negative departures. A February warm-up is always a threat. If you do believe anything very long-range, the data itself doesn't yet support that outcome. Cold conditions may be bolstered if the MJO eventually traverses through Phase 7 as currently progged.

NBM whisker is between almost 0" and 5" so there remains a wide spread of formulations across models. Clearly going to be a meso-defined event so we probably need to get a little closer to onset. 25% chance of 6" or more at KPHL. Not great odds but there's still a clear potential. 4" to 6" seems like a fairly aggressive early call, though, in my non-professional opinion. I'd like to hear an expert opinion on that given the spread.

13 UTC NBM still favors odds of rain-to-snow 55:20 at maximum rain potentiality, but it closed the gap a decent amount from a peak of 66:4 at 7 UTC. In other words, there was a clear cold trend. It also now favors snow early on the day Friday, 34:28, as opposed to the 66:13 rain-favored odds from the run before. A mix is a good call right now unless the trend continues.

Most typical arrangement of indices and ingredients for a major coastal are -NAO, -AO, +PNA, -EPO, and a 50/50 low that locks forward movement of the main cyclone. 50/50 is latitude and longitude. You want the +PNA because it orients the ridge axis out west that, in turn, creates ideal trough orientation downstream / in the eastern CONUS. Storms can ride the trough, gather strength, and come north. There's some more nuanced version of the variables that might be even better, that is, a pattern that's relaxing (like a -PNA going positive or a -NAO going positive) lending to higher correlation.

Long-term, the warmth has muted somewhat, but the pattern remains pretty hostile. Still seeing shots of cold with brief hints of 50s preceding them. More "seasonal" temps, overall. Seems the -PNA is locking in for the foreseeable. The other indices might head in the right direction, but until we fix the pacific side, the true snow events and sustained winter might be harder to find. For a muted Nina that seems about right. We don't want to see what the long-range EPS and GEPS show, however. Full latitude ridging and the cold air is scoured out of nearby Canada, but the long-range warm looks have been difficult to trust. Seems the models want to revert to a more typical Nina base state (of moderate variety or stronger). Maybe come January we can re-establish a more favorable pattern.

I saw an 8.8" measurement in NWS PIS (before lake effect), seemed kind of high to me. The wind and drifting made things difficult to measure. I had about 5" at midnight on Saturday based on some manner of averaging and trying to find a decent wind-protected spot. We probably got another 1.5" afterward. There were some decent rates, at times, but nothing like that 2020 event with 4"/hr.

I think the NWS tends to lean NBM - latest run has Morgantown with a 44% chance of 8" or more. 76% chance of 6" or more. Pretty decent odds. I'm sure the typical places with orographic lift will jackpot. AGC has a 46% chance of 6" or more for the same run. Almost a coin flip. Blend mean is 4.1" total but it seems to favor an amount between 4-7" for AGC. That's definitely bullish, as even the unreliable but typically juiced SREF mean is lower, but I'm not sure what ratio that plot measures.

Definitely going to come down to where the relatively narrow band of frontogenesis sets up. It's going to be cold-cold, so the ratios should be quite decent with any kind of moderate snow growth under convergence. It's only about two to three tenths of precip total for AGH. Have to make it count because it could be the last look at snow until towards New Year's or into 2026. Christmas Week is looking too warm.

Some flizzard yesterday, but now it's looking like the next discrete event is Saturday into Sunday. Evolution looks pretty similar to the one on the 2nd. Another quick hitting 2-4" event. Initially, it looks a little colder than the last system, so perhaps there's less concern for mixing in the southern areas. Fairly decent agreement amongst the major models for a synoptic event at this range, though. The smaller details will have to get worked out later.

I'll take the 4" and run on December 2nd. That's better than many of the recent Decembers put together.

Tomorrow looks like a classic southern slider with just enough northern stream interaction to get us 2-3" and keep the rain at bay, except for those in the southernmost counties, of course. The warm tongue is undefeated. Not likely to find any big events in this pattern, but the next couple weeks look okay for those old-timey Alberta Clippers. I'm sure we'll take any snow while we can get it. It should make things look festive around these parts until the (perhaps brief) Christmas warmup.

With the first snow around - somewhere - I guess it ignites the mood. *Cue eggplant emoji* We do still have a few more weeks of meteorological fall. For now, it seems most, if not all, of the models want to build a -NAO block towards the end of the month. First step is seeing if that verifies. Next step would be determining if it's relevant this early in the year and how long it could last.

I think that's correct, but if I recall, the first one was a freeze watch? Did it actually hit freezing temperatures? I don't think we got below freezing here in Allegheny, anyway. Technically, it also says only freeze watches are discontinued after the first fall "killing" freeze. Freeze warnings may be issued at any time during growing season. I don't know how much sense that makes in autumn, but at least that's how they are described. https://www.weather.gov/pbz/wwacriteria

I'd had an observational theory for years that summer was lasting longer, but the data is now more-or-less confirming it. It is a relatively small sample size in the grand scheme of things, but we know it is warming, regardless. The next question for me is how does this affect winter long-term. I thought maybe we were moving to a 6-and-6 type split of winter and summer (six months each), but it is possible we see abbreviated winters and then those transition months that still resemble fall and spring. Maybe a 2-2-2 approach. This is decadal or longer in timeframe as the climate (gradually?) shifts. In the short-term, really any outcome remains possible.

Generally worse for snow in the East. The overall regime from the last decade+ was a -PDO-led pacific, which has resulted in a sort of snow dearth, particularly along the East Coast. Granted, we don't rely on quite the same mechanisms here in the mountains, but decreasing snow chances can impact us just the same. Especially true if you're hunting for a big one.

I'm curious why we seem to hit our peak heat in June and then have "cold" shots in August. Shouldn't that be reversed? Is that just recency bias? Kind of an interesting dynamic. This is looking forward to winter, but that dominant -PDO is something to note from this summer, how it may affect our winter.

I'm guessing rainfall deficits or surpluses are quite localized over the last few weeks. Locally, I think, we've dodged most of the rain, so July has felt quite a bit drier than either May or June here.

For those interested, KDKA had a few segments on the outbreak from 40 years ago. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/1985-tornado-outbreak-western-pennsylvania-40-years/ This wasn't something I was aware of as a kid, but I now know people that were in Hermitage that day and had to shelter. Still the only F5 in PA history, and they've since said a couple of those F4s would have been re-classified as EF5s under the new scale.

Curious how much out-of-state help the power companies have employed for this. Due to the wide scope of the damage, it wouldn't surprise me much if things were shut down the rest of the week.

Wind was very intense as that line first blew in - classic bow echo. It was relatively brief, though. Estimate we hit gusts around 60 MPH, but I didn't get a chance to measure. Luckily we held power here, but it looks like it is out all around us. A tree fell on a nearby pizza place.

Enhanced risk tomorrow, pretty unusual around here. Looks more relevant to the north of PIT.