jwilson

I was planning on hitting the links Friday or Saturday.. maybe not such a good idea now? I have played in the heat before, it's just miserable. And no alcohol, of course.

Here's a couple images from last night that I captured on that final severe storm of the evening. This was on the very southern edge of the cell. First is the possible wall cloud. This isn't the best it looked, but it's the only real view on tape I managed to grab of it (this is actually a still from a video). It looked a bit more defined as it approached. There was a clear inflow band, as well (extending off to the right of this image). Unfortunately, I didn't end up attempting to get any more pictures or videos of it for some dumb reason. Here is a quick GIF of some lightning I captured. It got pretty intense. Evidently there was hail with this storm further to the north, but the core of the storm missed me. (If image isn't working, click here.)

Just caught the southern tip of that severe storm. No hail, impressive light show, looked like a wall cloud as it moved in (hard to make out at night for certain but thanks light pollution). Some nice video, as well, but my phone is almost dead so I'll see what's worth revisiting tomorrow.

If today busts for the southern regions, the enhanced risk area shifts south for tomorrow, but it might end up putting the city locales on the northern fringe instead of the southern. Could still be a miss. There will be a final chance region-wide on Thursday. The probabilities look lower in severe terms, however, at least for now.

Couple more chances for severe upcoming, but thus far this year there hasn't been much locally. I think June is our peak season, though.

Around here there wasn't much action of which to speak. Seems we got stuck in the outflow dominant/downdraft portion of the squall line. There was a funnel cloud spotted near Conneaut Lake. Not sure if anything ever touched the ground, but that same storm has held tornado-warned status for a while now.

Took quite a while before the roads caved. Light snow in general. Definitely been in a subsidence zone most of the day. Doubt we verify on the high end.

I think the question a lot of folks have is whether we have entered a new normal with snow in these areas, or if it's more of a short-term decadal trend.

Even if this wave stood on its own, it would have had way more potential. The fast flow would have prevented HECS labels, but all these little pieces of energy had to fight with each other in the last few days. The coastal helped robbed this main storm of some energy and pushed it south. We were looking at a 12" event a couple days ago, now we're down to 2-4" if we're lucky. In March, that just doesn't cut it. Hopefully coastal enhancement means it overperforms for you folks, though.

I see we were downgraded to an Advisory. lol

Voice of my childhood there. Enjoy retirement! He's probably half the reason I got into weather as a kid.

Hope you fine Philly folks get nailed on this one, especially given this slummy winter. I'll be watching from the bushes.

Pittsburgh NWS twitter explains their reasoning behind the warning: (https://twitter.com/NWSPittsburgh/status/1101932802080157696)

Yeah, I get why they were complaining (I think they were at historic levels of futility for snow), but everyone knew they'd play catch-up before long. Some people just need perspective, really. There's quite a few in the MA forum especially that would go insane living here. I can't imagine some of those guys making it 10 years without a double-digit event.

I've seen this on the coast and they tend to be modeled somewhat by the meso models. I don't see a single model (mesos included) getting anywhere near 6" for Pittsburgh metro unless I'm missing something. The closest is the Euro with 4" (and it maybe paints a small strip of 6" in eastern Washington county). Warning (in this case) means 6" in 12 hours is imminent. I don't know that that's the wording I would use.

That warning is bizarre given it requires 6" in 12 hours or 8" in 24 hours. I don't expect to hit either of those marks. A watch might have made sense, then downgraded to WWA when it became clear we weren't hitting warning criteria.

This has been one of the worst winters for modeling, I believe, at least in the long-term. It probably isn't as bad as I think, but I would like to see verification scores relative to other years. Constant short-term adjustments, disagreements, etc. I do agree the Euro has not been strong in a year when verification scores say the GFS has been abysmal. Twice now it has caved to the GFS, though. Seems the models couldn't handle the pattern overall of this winter. I'm sure this will make for an interesting case study for those in the field. It was so bad the FV3 has been put back to sleep. The Sunday storm is losing much of its impact over the entire northeast. Given how the January system went, it wouldn't surprise me if the Sunday storm went even further southeast or drier than is being modeled. Well, I guess we learn to not get suckered in when there are all these little balls of energy trying to vie for the limited amount in the atmosphere. The paradigm of "choosing the model that looks worse for us" certainly hasn't been shifted by this season.

Yeah I think you're right. Mistake on my part, thinking those maps only showed a single event synopsis. Storm is definitely less amped, though. Truthfully, this was never going to be a "big one" because of the progressive flow. If there weren't so many waves scrambling close together, I do think this weekend could have been a major event (maybe not for us - depends on other factors - but for someone). I do agree, beggars can't be choosers and all, but we've still managed a fair amount of snow this year. For me, the little to modest events have simply lost their appeal. Is 2010 still the last double-digit snowfall for Pittsburgh metro?

Euro still considerably less impressive than it was (cutting totals in half or more). Honestly, at this time I'm over the nuisance snows. I'm big game hunting. If we can't get a big one, then I don't really care if the GFS verifies and we get flurries.

As predicted, the GFS has gone in a poor direction based on its own interpretations. We still have the Euro on our side, but right now it is alone in terms of a stronger and further NW solution, by far. The NAM is halfway in-between the two and considerably faster than the GFS. I tend to side with the NAM here, for now. It's a split and it nailed the far faster movement with the shortwave we had this morning. Obviously, lots of ways this can still swing. Range of possibilities from 1" to 12" .. how's that for a forecast?

We got NAM'd with the 18Z suite for tonight. Started showing 6" lollipops in Washington and Southern Allegheny county, including the high-res (it is closer to 4" with Ferrier corrections). The half-foot is probably too wet, but there might be a couple places that snag 4" or just over. Some of the soundings are showing really strong Omega in the DGZ and that's how it can happen. As for the weekend, the NAM is not impressive. Much less organized than other models. The other change at 18Z I noticed was the GFS wanting to crank that first low once it gets in the Atlantic on Saturday. That could rob some energy from the Sunday system and/or push it south. Not a favorable change, in my estimations. 0Z runs tonight will be telling.

Funnily enough, all the overnight models pretty much caved to it. NAM leading the way. Looks like a fair 1-3" event overnight. Could make tomorrow morning's commute a mess. Still not in comfortable range for Sunday. The NAM at distance - so take it with a grain of salt, of course - looks a good bit different than the others (GFS bounced a bit south from 0Z at 6Z).

The NAM gives us a little powder bomb early morning Friday (2-3"). No other models are on board, though. FV3 is nothing. GFS and ICON are a dusting. CMC tries to get southern Allegheny an inch. High-res NAM is drier (looks like a ridge special). Appears it will depend how moisture deprived the system is with a high sitting nearby. At least we have some wiggle room for the Sunday storm to come north (unless you're the Euro, of course). Better that than it being a cutter, but of course given the preceding low, we could easily miss the sweet spot thanks to suppression.

NAVGEM looks like the Euro, which IMO is a bad sign. It has a progressive bias, so it is unusual to see an amped signal there. Normally I wouldn't care, and back in January the Euro lost to the GFS, but I'm hesitant to bet against it twice. It largely depends on how amped the Friday storm gets north of us. My non-scientific analysis: pick whichever result looks worse for us and bet on that one.

There hasn't been a coastal all year. I believe any threat of a Miller A in this pattern is quite DOA. Flow is flat at best, there are too many little waves taking energy from each other. I'm ready for next year, honestly. Maybe we can finally escape this pacific flow (and lose the moisture train in the process). Unless we get a '93 repeat, but chances of that are about one in a million. JINX