Burghblizz

Great morning, although dicey commute. Got about 4” in just under 4 hours. If some of the Virga overnight would have translated in to snow, I think you would have seen  6 and 7” reports. Tops in the immediate area was around 5”

Edit: there was one report in Plum of 6”...which is possible considering there was a report of 5.3” in I believe Natrona.

4.2” officially....certainly the most exciting of the otherwise boring  ~28” total so far this year. 

59 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

This is one of those days I wish employers would close down or have some consideration for employees not making it in to the office.

I can do that if I need to, but I have 6 remote employees in town for a meeting.

I’d much rather be home watching  

Very heavy snow on parkway east. I got a head start because I had meetings but this figures to be a debacle soon

16 minutes ago, MikeB_01 said:

Wicked RZ signal from the NAM. 

NAM really has the surface temp holding below freezing until late in the day. That would be In the late afternoon still, after 6-7” of snow. 

It has been really consistent with a hard morning thump on Wednesday. It’s trending a tick faster which might help.

Probably more likely to see about half that and over to plain rain in the afternoon. But Wouldn’t be shocked to see a couple hours of heavy snow early Wed 

6 minutes ago, north pgh said:

Am I wrong to think we may be looking at a nice 2-4 surprise quick thump Wednesday morning before we go to freezing slop? I know these front end deals fail us almost every time but models looking better. Thoughts?

I wouldn’t even call it a surprise...I can see that being the forecast. Seems to be enough precip before the warm air really takes over

11 minutes ago, CoraopolisWx said:

Although it’s pretty much alone, Euro continues to like early Wednesday. 

The precip would have to come in fast and furious for anything close to verification. Can’t trust the 850 temps holding on very long. 

New NAM looking a little colder on the front end

Sucks to see multiple threats seem to disappear. 

Crappy winter (but it does give me some pleasure that Boston is like at 4”)

2 hours ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

Not sure of the last warning, but I do recall Hazard Weather Outlooks or Special Weather Statements being issued for such things.

PIT was one of like 8 offices to pioneer the new “snow squall warning” for use as an official alert. To my knowledge, they haven’t used it. CTP has. 

26 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

is there a reason the PIT forecast office doesn’t snow squall warnings? This would be the time to do it. 

The last warning I remember was Feb ‘93...but we got warning criteria snows with it as well.....~8” if I recall. A rare but glorious site from just a lake effect band.

ive seen other offices lately put up warnings for just the event of a squall, but haven’t seen Pit do that. 

White Aht dahntahn

I wasn’t crying too much over this one...took my initial 3” and enjoyed a nice Sunday afternoon and evening.

Probably would rather that then have gotten 5” that got encased in ice, then washed away anyway.

Weekend looking interesting, albeit not looking like a large storm at this point

Heavier burst again, but that backend looks to be racing through Ohio. Maybe 1-2 more hours of snow.

2 hours ago, north pgh said:

Short term models showing 3-4 inches. Nice surprise tonight. Nice to see it snowing while daylight and we can actually see it. 

Really nice late afternoon, although roads suck already 

It’s been uncanny how much night time snow we have gotten over the last 9-10 years. 

Most areas seem to have 1.5” to 2” currently 

1 hour ago, canderson said:

I love it, honestly. Although roads are reallllly slick, rush hour might be brutal. 

A day-long snowglobe? Sign me up. 

Move to SW PA....Pittsburgh averages 41” of snow per year, while averaging 39 days containing “measurable” snow. 

Just now, RitualOfTheTrout said:

The I-70 corridor looks to score the win on this one. Still some decent returns on radar in that area too.

Yep - as expected.

The border counties should get a solid 4-5”.

i saw one report of 5” in southern Allegheny, but didn’t see anything else to substantiate it. 

Very impactful 2-3” overall....timing and temps wreaking havoc

Very interesting stuff. Assuming those are full calendar years and not seasons (so the average would be exactly the same overall anyway, but some of the years might look a little different)

Also, good observation as to the lack of Lake Erie ice coverage perhaps fueling more of these nuisance snows, even if bigger storms have suffered since 2011.

I also think that it’s possible that they were not nearly as dilligent about measuring minor snow in the early 1900s. Look at how many lower snowfall seasons there were. Has our climate changed that much? Probably not...I just think they weren’t measuring every snow shower that came through and perhaps just stuck a ruler in the ground at the end of the day.

Measuring location before 1950 (AGC vs PIT) could be a slight factor, but not much. They are both around 1150 to 1200’

Impressive squall this morning! Bad timing though. 2 hours to go 18 miles 

10 minutes ago, jwilson said:

Not too surprised at the upcoming warm period.  I believe the MJO has a 7-10 day lag period, and it's been camped moderately in warm phases now since the 21st.  The AO is doing what it can to offset it, but even that looks transient and is likely to bounce back to positive before too long (as it did back in early December).  Other than lack of -NAO, our other big problem is the PNA is now stepping down to negative, and considering how poor the pacific has been this winter, that only makes things that much worse.  Given all the other conditions, the AO alone couldn't save us.

If the MJO continues to do laps in Phase 6, that's a real problem.  I wouldn't expect particularly wintry conditions until that forecast improves.  At this time of winter, Phases 8 thru 3 are ideal, and we've barely even touched the cold MJO phases this year (just five days or so in early January).  Outside of the active STJ moisture train, this has been much closer to a NINA winter rather than a NINO.

I estimate we're in for another two weeks (at least) of this current pattern before we should expect changes.  Unfortunately, that burns the first half of February, but maybe we can score something minor on Friday before the positive temp anomalies.  Somehow, Pittsburgh is already close to half the seasonal average with 17.6" this winter.  They've also recorded a foot of snow this month, which sounds high to me, though it appears we've nickle-and-dimed our way to something reasonable.  It's still below normal, but not severely so.

Yeah, we haven’t had a winter below 20” in almost 30 years. The nickel and dimes add up, even in extremely boring winters like this one. Northern suburbs did well this past weekend.

Hoping for a nice finish (amazing that we are even mentioning  “finish” already, it seems like it just started)

Beautiful morning again this morning with this squall. Quick half inch in about 30 min.

I’d take this as a 50th percentile for this coming week:

26 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

Pretty nice winter day. Cold, snow cover and periodic light snow falling. 

Sometimes we forget to enjoy modest snows...

Ive been guilty before of completely blowing off 3”-4” clippers in favor of being glued to models for a later storm (that never happened)

That’s pretty. Tracks like that used to much more common. Slop would be I95s problem not ours.

And yes, no WTOD.

You can tell there likely a negative tilted trough and closed 500 low without even looking. Ideally that little retrograde happens a little further south

20 minutes ago, Syrmax said:

Anyone notice Weather Underground has ruined Intellicast winter radar?  Sad.

I was just poking my head in to see how this area did, and you are 100% correct! The new page sucks and while you can get to old Intellicast radar, it was suck in the past for most of this storm