CarlislePaWx

I can't believe how consistent many of the models have been for me / Cumberland County. Very close to the 6" mark (in the middle of the county) with a little less to the east and a little more to the west. All it will take is 3 hours of 2"/hr snow for me to hit my target! Meanwhile I bottomed out here about 30 minutes ago at 10.9 degrees and for the moment it has reversed and I'm up to 11.7. Really great radiational cooling nights are always like this. The temps go down a few degrees, then stop, then go up a little bit, then stop, then start dropping again to a lower reading. The sky looked great tonight with the calm and crisp conditions along with almost a full moon directly up over my head.

My high today was back at midnight at 24.3 degrees. My high this afternoon was 22.3 degrees. Low this morning 14.5. Temp right now 16.0, dew point +1.8 F. If we have to go through all the transitions from snow to rain, I really hope to first get at least 4" of snow, which really should be doable with a rate of 1.5"/hr for 3 hours. Follow that with as much sleet as possible (several inches), followed by 0.1" freezing rain, followed by plain rain, light, and less than 0.1" and a temp no higher than 36. That will provide incredible pack retention which should easily hang around until the next storm? next Friday (lol).

I'm pretty sure that when the NWS totally restructured its zones to the county level (more than 15 years ago), if there was enough of a climatological difference in one portion of a county to the other, then that county was split up by name...ie northern/southern, coastal/inland, northwest/southeast, etc. They will only issue differing forecasts within a county if it exists as a "split county". There apparently is not enough difference in Dauphin to warrant a split...thus it's a "whole" county.

FYI>>Take a look over to the far right at 3'oclock and notice the pressure of that low out in the ocean. 969 millibars is about as deep as the superstorm ever got. I don't know if its presence downstream is having any effect at all on our setup, but it certainly is an indication of what the atmosphere wants to do with lows, which appears to be bomb them!

I do have to chuckle over DT's map. The 11-16" line goes directly over me PLUS the purple means heavy ice accretion. Are those two things both happening?? I'm asking simply based upon his forecast depiction. Also, he'll do his final call tomorrow night which will probably bring major changes. I just can't see him not changing the accumulation distributions. But, what do I know? I only went to his wedding.

How about that 6-10” forecast from ABC27 last night???

Yes, yes, & No. They took away sub 20 temps quite a few years ago. I'm pretty sure you need sustained winds >20mph with snowfall rates >1"/hr combo for 3 continuous hours for NWS blizzard warning.

I thought the afternoon CTP disco was very good. It seemed like at least at present they were saying that the first half of the storm should be all snow everywhere. That's about as far as their "likely" feelings went.

One thing my weather friends have told me is you need the 700 low to pass south of you for precip to be good and warming aloft to be mitigated. This depiction shows the low south of the m/d line, which is at least one positive (for those of us in lsv).

You're comparing 0z with 6z

I like the parallels to March 1994. Not because I remember that storm specifically but because I had 70" of snow that winter (living in north jersey) along with a ton of ice, especially in January. Of course, January 1994 is quite noteworthy for us in the LSV as in 8 days we will observe the 28th anniversary of the coldest temperature ever recorded in Harrisburg (at least since 1888) with a low temperature of 22 below zero. I'm guessing that out this way there were some readings even colder.

What's weird is that it suddenly slows down when it reaches us, then goes directly over us, then decides to move northeast rapidly. Still looks like a good thump with only a brief changeover, then ending as snow. 983 mb when it passes overhead. That's pretty close to 29.00" which would make it one of the lowest pressures we've seen around here in quite some time.

Well, I might not have had my single-digit low this morning that I thought was a given last night...but...I only within the past five minutes have reached freezing! It's 32.0 degrees for my high of the day so far. That's a departure of around 8 degrees from the forecast high of 40. Nothing is melting yet. That's the biggest surprise. I still have a solid 2" remaining in my back yard, and there is even still a tiny glaze left on some trees that do not get any direct sun in January.

I'm only 23 still after an overnight low of 11.5 degrees...so no single digits for me this go 'round. But, still colder by one degree than my coldest of all last winter. I don't mind it warming up a bit especially if the old snow will be replaced with a very deep (?) new layer later Sunday. I'd like to throw my 2 cents in to @Itstrainingtime's question (and it's still along the lines of the other comments). The more powerful the low the more likely the accompanying cold front has occluded, which means the colder portion of the low can be much closer to the low's center where the eastern flank becomes overwhelmed with the cold air from the western side.

Haha. The "deathband" did not budge and stayed right over me for hours and only moved east very begrudgingly towards the end.

Ok...just a few minutes ago I dropped below the coldest temp of all of last winter, 12.6 F and have now hit 12.4 degrees. My dewpoint is holding at 7.6 degrees. I think nearly everyone has a chance to see single-digit lows tomorrow morning. I wouldn't be shocked if I dropped to +5. I'll bet York, THV, gets down close to zero. We'll see in 10 hours.

One of the very unique aspects of the Jan '96 storm (as you already know) was that temperatures were in the single digits leading in to the start of the storm. It was 8 degrees around 10:00am on Sunday morning when the first flakes began. That is the only snow storm of my life to experience that (single digit temps) at the beginning of a huge event. The next coldest was February 2003 which had me 11 degrees when PD II began and remained in the teens for the entire storm. It stayed in the teens the whole time in '96 as well. I'm trying to remember how cold it was going in to January 2016's storm. That was the largest accumulation of my life at 35". I don't expect to see another one of them the remainder of my life. I'm sure someone here could look up the temps for the 2016 storm. I'm thinking low 20's but not teens.

My midnight update for 1/9/22 --- my temperature spike due to winds (which were light < 5mph) peaked out just 0.3 degrees from my expectation of 37.0 with a reading of 36.7 degrees which occurred at 10:47 pm. Icicles began to melt off the shrubs and trees. But, the big news is the snow cover is now encased in a wonderful, thick glaze of ice that's not going anywhere until Wednesday at the earliest. Soon afterwards I noticed breaks in the clouds and my temperature was retreating slowly. At midnight my temp is 35.4 degrees and by dawn I'll be back below freezing.

Were you above freezing for most of the day? That's microclimate for you. The nuances of weather are always surprising. I'm now up to 36.5 and crawling my way up to 37.0 (lol). Only a half degree left for my semi-prediction / expectation.

Definitely slowing down. Might not hit 37, but at (9:54) 36.0 (+4.0 degree rise in the past 15 minutes) Air beginning to dry just a tad as RH down to 83% with a dew point of 31

I've seen it play out like this many times before. Temp rise is slowing down now >>(9:51) 35.8

Winds beginning to pick up a bit more now. Temp 34.2. 2 Minutes later (9:44) up to 34.9 >>(9:45) 35.2 >>(9:46) 35.6 >>I'm fully expecting 5 degree rise to 37. (9:48) 35.8

Ramp up has begun. Now up to 33.4. A little bit of wind beginning to stir up the air and allow the warmer air not far up to mix down. >>Edit 2 mins later...temp up to 34.0 and rising rapidly.

Well, I just checked in on Wundermap across all of PA and the good news (if you are hoping for ice/snow retention) is that nearly the entire state is below 40 degrees with one lone station in Perry County showing 41. The area of 40's that was wider across the west and west-central earlier has shrunken considerably. I think any brief warm-up will be muted, at least in duration. But also, very unlikely to rise above the upper 30's before it starts heading back to freezing after a few hours.

Abilene, has around 3" while you, sadly have 2" over the whole 15 days.