TheClimateChanger

Why do I need to comment on typical "run of the mill" wintry weather? NWS says we finish the month 3-4F above normal, on the whole. The coldest low at Pittsburgh was 7F. It used to drop below zero almost every single winter. It was like 22 below 30 years ago.

Actually, it's not just old winters. I counted 27 winters where there is a discrepancy, including multiple recent ones (1996-97, 1998-99, 2000-01, 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07, 2010-11, 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22). The vast majority of the time NWS Pittsburgh's count is a bit higher but there are exceptions. Most of the differences are small - less than an inch or two. But some of the early winters, there are discrepancies of up to 10 inches.

That's a significant error too. Drops the sixth highest calendar day snowfall to a two-way tie for 10th place.

Looking at snowfall numbers earlier and I noticed that xmACIS is sometimes wrong with early snow totals. I noticed there's a discrepancy in some years between the numbers given by xmACIS and the NWS totals. The error was most glaring for 1950-1951, which xmACIS gives as 80.0" but the NWS tally has 82.0". So I looked into it, and it looks like xmACIS has some errors. They have screwed us out of some of our snow from the November 1950 storm, showing 12.0" on the 24th, rather than the 14.0" that was actually observed.

No highest was 10.7 inches on December 17 (11.0" if you count the 0.3" that fell on the 18th as a single event). That's the highest 2- and 3-day total since February 2010.

Surprisingly, we still need 2.7" before the end of the month at PIT just to keep pace with last year's total there. We are currently at 11.6" for the season. Last season had 14.3" through the end of January, and that ended up being the 8th lowest on record, and least since 1990-1991. Actually looking at the list, the top 5 lowest were all from the city station. And the only two since moving out to either airport that were less were basically negligible differences, so that was about as bad as it gets climatologically. Of course, we had almost zero winter once the calendar turned to February last year. Probably won't duplicate that.

Dropped to 8 degrees on my weather station. Low of 9 at PIT.

Looks like there’s still some areas of heavier snow out there this morning.

Airport had at least 0.03” of precipitation after that time. Could be more, as ASOS can struggle with the snow. But even that should be good for an additional half inch.

Nice burst of snow here right now. Very big flakes. The main band is off to my west and south though.

No, I’m in Beaver County.

Yes, some of the best rates of this entire event despite all the complaints and banter.

Yeah, I think we are still on track. Radar looks solid. It’s just been so long since we had any significant snow that they forgot how it works around here. Always premature bust calls, even in some of the bigger events.

Heavier snow here now, with better flake size. Maybe tapping into that DGZ.

It does look like there is some heavier lake enhanced snow showers moving into eastern Ohio, on radar.

I don’t think we’ll get there because it’s supposed to fall in a 12 hour period. Don’t think there will be any 12 hour period with 3 inches or more.

Snowing a bit heavier here now than earlier. Looks like around 2 inches here as well thus far. Seems to be playing out as expected. This was only ever supposed to be 3.5 or 4 inches over like 14 hours.

Light snow falling here as well. Probably a good sign. Atmosphere moistened up ahead of the main storm system.

I'm thinking somewhere in between the NAM 3k and the Shaler Facebook group.

Not to mention, the National Blend of Models literally had all of southwest PA in the 100% chance of 1"+, so I'm thinking this out to lunch. Lol.

Looks like a bunch of nonsense. I love how these high resolution models try to account for geographic features but fail miserably. The Ohio River valley is not a 20-mile wide deep depression in the earth. Many of those areas are 1200-1300' in elevation! I wouldn't even expect such a big elevation difference in this setup when it's going to be way below freezing. Sure the hilltops will probably ring out a bit more moisture, but that's an absurd depiction.