TheClimateChanger

Yes, doesn't look like this should be nearly as big of a deal as the early February event that caused a lot of power disruptions west of Pittsburgh. That one was kind of a unique event with the cold air pressing south. This event looks like it should be a more typical storm track with warm air surging northward. Still most of the models at this point in time would support at least a glaze of ice to perhaps a tenth of an inch or so north of the city. I know some of the ice accumulation maps show a lot more than that north and west of the City, but that's right around 32 so I wouldn't expect much accrual. Won't be 30/31 like in the early February event. Also should rise above freezing areawide at some point with just plain rain for several hours.

Well, it looks like the GFS has surrendered on the snowfall front. Still shows a modest snowfall north and west of the city, but the heaviest accumulations are well off to the north now. Regardless, looks like another precipitation bomb. So probably a good idea to keep an eye on this as their could be more significant ice accumulations for parts of the region. Looking at the temperatures shown on the GFS (probably underdone) but they keep it generally below freezing for the city (29-31) until the low approaches when it spikes into the low/mid 30s for a few hours, before dropping back into the 20s.

The GDPS looks a bit more realistic to me with its depiction

Turned sunny here, now a second squall popped up.

Yeah, that was showing up as 40 dbz on radar.

Surprised there’s no snow squall warning for this. How bad would it have to be to get one?

Quite squally here now.

Snow squall band looks to be training and setting up more parallel to the flow, rather than perpendicular to the flow. Maybe we can pick up an inch or so.

Looks like there may be something to track late next week. The GFS, Euro and Canadian all have a low passing to the south. May be a similar setup to the event earlier this month.

Yes, it's not really going on on that much of a limb there. Certainly wouldn't be the first time we went two weeks in early February with less than 3 inches, but probably 7 of 10 years that number would be met (given the average is 6.7"). But 90-100% would definitely be better odds than just strictly climo.

I think what we need is a storm to track like the November 1950 storm, or the White Hurricane of November 1913. Not sure if you guys are familar with that one - has the daily record of 12.5" on the 9th of November. I think storm total downtown was like 14" with 12-24" widespread throughout the region. I always thought that was just some storm up in northern Michigan, but I guess it was a potent northern wave that produced strong gales. Then a new low pressure formed in the southeast coast on the cold front and retrograded northeast to Erie while bombing out with a negatively tilted trough. I think either of those tracks would be really good for us. Superstorm Sandy came close but was too early in the year for snow outside of the mountains.

Some of the models were suggesting YNG airport could get 16", and I checked and there has not been a two day storm total that higher there since November 1950. And compared to Columbus and Indy at a similar latitude, PIT has had way more big storms.

I think some people like to complain about Pittsburgh, but given its location and latitude, 4 official 20+" storms is actually pretty good. Toledo has only had one, and that was in 1900. Detroit has only had one, and it was in the 1800s (in April, no less). And there's been several others that have produced 20"+ in the area, but were somewhat less at the official observation site.

Just for context… Toledo’s 12.5” storm total was sixth biggest on record. https://twitter.com/jayberschback/status/1489460096140775428?s=21

Power just came back on after nearly 16 hours…

Still no power here.

Same here. I can hear branches and tree limbs cracking and falling in the woods.

Power still out here. I don’t know how you guys aren’t getting this ice storm?

Power outage here

Freezing rain has changed to heavy sleet here in southern Beaver.

Probably latent heat release from the rain keeping temperatures near or just above freezing in many places overcoming the colder air advecting in from the north at the surface.

I was actually thinking the icing was worse than expected for this point in time…