CarlislePaWx

The evolution of the GFS Thursday bomb is wild. The low initially comes up from the southwest and makes it nearly to State College. Then the brakes jam on, the low completely stops and proceeds to secondary due south to south central Virginia at which point it begins bombing, crashing from 997 to 983. I don't have to even look at the upper air maps to know that the low has to cut off and become stacked. It then jumps northeast to the tidewater area producing near blizzard conditions in DC/MD/DE with the low center over the northern most tip of Chesapeake Bay. So the cold air has completely encircled the low center as it brings the heavy snow up into south central / south eastern PA / then southern NJ, then northern NJ / NYC and onward to the northeast. Let's just say I did a little paraphrasing above, so I haven't described it as seen verbatim, but reasonably close. I can't think of a snowstorm that ever traversed the path the GFS is showing here. Instead of a secondary jumping to the coast, it jumps due south from our region and pops over south central Virginia before it slowly progresses NNE along the coast and even just inland over Maryland. Anyway, I took the time to do the PBP only because of the low's evolution and wild path it is shown to take. That caught my eye more than the snow, that is until accumulations around here had reached 12-20"...lol. Okay, that's it for me. (I hope you all know I don't believe it will likely pan out like this.) But it's just great to be tracking again, and even a potential monster later next week.

I just melted down my freezing rain and sleet. It came out to precisely 0.25" (liquid). There was no plain rain recorded throughout the entirety of the event as the temperature never went above 32.0 degrees. Ice-coated trees and grass are barely showing signs of melting with a current temperature of 33.6 degrees. Pavement and sidewalks are mostly ice-free now. They experienced the least accumulation of ice from the storm. It's next to impossible to come up with precise measurements of sleet versus freezing rain, although it seems obvious that the predominant form was from freezing rain. I am going to go with 0.3" of sleet (0.09" liquid) and 0.16" of freezing rain. The final few hours on either side of midnight were a "heavy" freezing drizzle. It looked like the tiniest snowflakes floating and flying around, but it wasn't snow. This precipitation brings my YTD total to 34.57" which represents an annual deficit of approximately 13.5" compared to the normal annual average of 48", which is the total I recorded during last year. I'll have the final yearly total after our last precip event coming up tomorrow evening into Monday afternoon.

I know the feeling. Once again, my sister back in north-central NJ (near Morristown), hits the snow jackpot. Mt Holly has them picking up 5-9", the highest total anywhere in Mt. Holly's CWA. Meanwhile around here...the mixtures continue. Temp has risen a tad now up to 28.6 degrees with a dew point of 25 and a wet bulb of 27.3. That means there is still some room left to drop back again if I can get some heavy stuff going for a while. The latest update from CTP for the Carlisle area has the main part of this storm winding down in about 3 hours with very little additional the rest of the night.

Here in Carlisle, at 2:30pm, there continues to be a mix of very light freezing rain mixed with sleet. Every time the intensity picks up the precip quickly becomes mostly sleet. Temp currently is down to 28.4 degrees with a rising dew point now up to 22. Several hours ago the dew point was 15, so wet-bulbing definitely exerting its influence. The total liquid equivalent is estimated to be around 0.03" with a hint of glaze progressively appearing. Definitely anxious to see if the HRRR's predictions come true.

I'm pretty sure @WmsptWxwasn't talking about the cold air for tomorrow's storm. He was talking about the strength of the cold air coming in on Monday behind the arctic front. The intensity of the cold post-frontal has been progressively weakening over the last few days. I can see how you could easily confuse the reference between the cold of tomorrow's storm versus Monday's cold.

In Carlisle, around 10:15am, the temperature is 34.3 degrees. Overnight I recorded just a trace of snow. Mulchy areas were white, however most all other areas were wet. Clearly the "action" was east of here towards Lebanon and Lancaster counties. I'll be watching the models to see how the Friday storm develops. With freezing rain events I often stay below 32 while points east and south warm up sooner. It's hard to believe that just 24 hours ago my forecast high temp for Friday was 57 degrees. This morning my forecast now is for a high temp of 32 degrees on Friday with early snow eventually changing to freezing rain. Still too early for anything definitive on Friday. Again, an interesting point is the farther northeast you go from south central, the longer the precip remains snow because that area is closer to the cold air source.

Good morning from Carlisle, where it is white and very cold. Fresh snowfall (albeit very light) combined with no wind and clear skies provided ideal radiational cooling overnight which allowed my temperature to drop all the way down to +3.4 degrees F, the coldest of the season thus far. That inch of snow that fell yesterday afternoon was just enough to radiate down into the single digits. Having read through all the morning posts it looks like many of us dropped below 10 degrees overnight. And, my prediction from last night regarding THV came true. I said I thought York would drop to zero, and they did, hitting -1 F.

Amazing what just a 1" coating of fresh snow can do if the skies can clear with very little to no wind. At 12:30am I'm down to 11.1 degrees and continuing to drop. I think that anyone with several inches of solid snowpack will find their temps in the single digits come dawn. I'll bet THV makes it down to zero. Last week my coldest reading was +6.6 degrees F. I think that's breakable. We'll see... Also, I melted down my snowfall, however I missed probably half of the accumulation because I didn't have my gauge outside on my board. I recorded somewhere between 0.8" and 1.0" of snowfall, but all of that only melted down to 0.01" of liquid! So, if you want to go with 80 : 1 SLR, I guess we can...lol. There's no doubt this snow was high ratio, however, I think the highest ratio I've ever officially recorded was around 30:1.

Near 7:00pm the temp is holding near 21 degrees. The snow flurries/showers is still continuing. That makes 3 hours with it still snowing, just very light. My meltdown will be forethcoming.

At 5:20pm it continues to snow lightly, but no longer accumulating. Just mood flakes...except I can't see them anymore...lol. I measured 0.8" in total new snow. Temperature has leveled off at 19.8 degrees. I love how crystalline the new snow is when it falls at these cold temperatures. My flashlight was reflecting back from the snow. I'll go melt the snow down once it has 100% ended. Perhaps it will be upwards of 15:1? We'll see.

Beginning to lighten up, but 0.5" of new snow here. Temp 19.9 degrees. Glad it hit while still daylight.

At 4:23pm here in Carlisle it is unexpectedly snowing moderately and probably at a rate that exceeds anything I had 2 nights ago. It's beginning to approach heavy as the flake size is increasing. I've picked up 0.3" of snow already and my temperature has dropped from 23 down to 20.3 degrees. I love snow when temps are this cold or colder because it instantly sticks to everything. I haven't looked at radar yet to see how widespread this is, but it remains solidly dark off to my west. What a surprise.

Here in Carlisle, my low overnight was 15.3 degrees. The wind almost never stopped blowing which prevented some from plummeting courtesy of deeper snowpack. I was already down to 17 at 6:00pm yesterday and hung out there for hours. Under a thin, milky overcast with dim sunshine my temp has risen to 21.6. Stay warm out there. I'll be staying nice and toasty indoors all day...lol.

Good morning all! I just caught up from all the posts since 1:00am. I'm very happy for all of you that grossly overachieved. Other than @canderson(sorry), I ended up with the second lowest accumulation coming in at a whopping 1.0" with 0.5" before midnight and the 0.5" after midnight. That 1.0" melted down to 0.11", close to 10:1 for water equivalent. Even just 1.0" everywhere is enough to create a beautiful early winter scene. I should also say that nearly all of the snow fell with a temperature that was above 32.0...but just barely with most of it falling around 32.5 degrees. One nice thing about the wet snow (now frozen) is that it is preventing blowing snow, which prevents drifts on my driveway and sidewalks. The temp has been hanging out around 23 degrees, and I'm not expecting it to rise much at all with a very cold 504dm thickness sweeping on through the daytime this afternoon. If anything I would anticipate a slow drop during this afternoon. Enjoy your winter wonderlands all! Oh, I forgot to mention my seasonal snow total is now up to 3.8".

At midnight, here in Carlisle, it continues to snow lightly, but steadily. The temperature has hung out around 32.7 for most of the evening which is preventing the paved street and sidewalks from completely covering over. As of midnight I have recorded 0.5" of new snowfall. This also records a storm total of 0.5". I melted down the snowfall so far and have measured 0.08" of liquid as of midnight. The temp has dropped 0.5 degrees in the past 30 minutes and is now standing at 32.2 degrees F. Almost every model has given me between 1.5" and 2.0" of snowfall. The canadian has been the only model that has pushed the 2+" line off to my northwest. So, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in the morning. Getting a solid 2" would be great, but it's hard to complain over just 1.5" when this has been modeled for me for many runs now. Good luck to all. I hope those that got gipped out of our last storm can take home the prize.

Thank you for confirming what I was suspecting. For the past 30 minutes I've had a mix of light sleet and snow, but more sleet based on what it looks like on my mulch and pavers. Temp dropped from 34 down to 33.6. As far as I can tell I'm not seeing any evidence of rain...just all frozen.

Low of 6.6 degrees this morning. I was hoping to eek out a few hours of sunshine this morning to help recharge my Tempest, but promptly at 9:00am the overcast moved back in again. (My Tempest is 5 years old and the battery is going. It uses solar to recharge. Thankfully it's just a back-up for my main Ambient station.) Temp already back up to 17.6, but with the overcast the speed of any warm up will be muted.

Here in Carlisle, shortly after 1:00pm...the temperature is currently 32.9 degrees and has remained below that until the present. The final board measurement was 2.2". However, there was some sleet and tiny bit of either rain or freeing rain. Conservatively, there had to be some compaction at the end that I wasn't here to measure. As a result I am going with a final snow total of 2.5". It likely was a few tenths higher because melting down the snow produced a liquid equivalent of 0.32". The forecast of 2-4" verified and the storm exceeded 2" which is my benchmark for being satisfied with the event. It was just enough to cover the ground in spots. Well, on to the next one. I hope enough snow cover can remain to help enhance the anticipated low temperature Thursday night, perhaps to as low as 10 degrees from radiation. We'll see.

Leaving now. Current obs is 2.0". Temp 30.9. Moderate to heavy snow right now. End is rapidly approaching and the mix line is <10 miles south of me. It's a race to the finish.

Carlisle update...snow intensity has increased to a rate of 0.75" / hour...almost heavy but I'll still call it heavily moderate. Temp 30.6 .

At 9:00am in Carlisle, it is snowing lightly. The temperature is 30.4 degrees with a dew point of 28.8 degrees and a wet bulb of 29.8 degrees. At 8:00am I had 1.1" of snow (my first ob today). After having light sleet for 15 minutes just before 8:00am it switched back to all snow. New snowfall the past hour was a paltry 0.2" giving a storm total thus far of 1.3". (I have a doctor appointment at 10:00 so I won't be updating my obs until when I get back which may not be until the noon ob). ttyl ...haha...just as I am about to post this the snow intensity has dramatically increased to moderate with much larger flakes. 0.5"/hr rate

I'm following right behind you. Up to 30.6 (from 23.5). However, dp is 23 and wet bulb is 27. I'm pretty sure we'll both drop some once the snow gets going. With a wet bulb of 27, that could pull me back to between 28 and 29. Hey, it still accumulates at 32, and if it falls heavily enough it can still accumulate up to 34. Oh wow, as I'm about to hit send I've now caught up to you...31.1 ! That's almost 8 degrees up from just a few hours ago. In any case, my board is set up for whatever I get, along with my clear vue gauge to melt down at the end. Off to bed for now. I'll see if I can get myself out of bed by 7:00 ish to catch the first hour or two of accumulations. >>PS...Now I'm up to 31.6......ughh...nope...Now up to 32.0. This is ridiculous. Now 32.2. I should have hit send 10 minutes ago...lol.

I'm following right behind you. Up to 30.6 (from 23.5). However, dp is 23 and wet bulb is 27. I'm pretty sure we'll both drop some once the snow gets going. With a wet bulb of 27, that could pull me back to between 28 and 29. Hey, it still accumulates at 32, and if it falls heavily enough it can still accumulate up to 34. Oh wow, as I'm about to hit send I've now caught up to you...31.1 ! That's almost 8 degrees up from just a few hours ago. In any case, my board is set up for whatever I get, along with my clear vue gauge to melt down at the end. Off to bed for now. I'll see if I can get myself out of bed by 7:00 ish to catch the first hour or two of accumulations. >>PS...Now I'm up to 31.6......ughh...nope...Now up to 32.0. This is ridiculous. Now 32.2. I should have hit send 10 minutes ago...lol.

Currently 26.2 degrees with a dew point of 21.4 degrees. The clouds started coming in about an hour ago. Temp had bottomed out at 23.5. If the snow can start before sunrise, that will give a great head start on snow retention on pavement/sidewalks. We shall see in the morning.

Woke up an hour ago to a nice surprise also. It was winding down and the temp was 32.2 degrees. Accumulations on the same surfaces as most others here. Mulch, grass, stones, trees, and my car. After "careful deliberation"...lol..., I'm going with 0.3" for this first measurable event of the season. There's too much white visible in the grass to consider anything less, imo. So...let the games begin! (Temp now up to 33.6 degrees and rapid melting taking place.)