RitualOfTheTrout

Ooff good call, I didn’t even realize I clicked on the banter / complaint thread hence me posting that obs report. At this point this thread is where this discussion belongs so I have no issue if y’all want to keep going at it. I just hate when it starts clogging the other thread which it sometimes does. Not saying you or anyone specifically. Anyways I’ll see myself back to the other thread.

Yeah lol, I saw all the new replies and thought maybe something popped up on the 18z GFS or the radar was lighting up all over… but no.

So I think part of the problem is the term bust is relative, to me it means epic fail like you get nothing or up to a quarter of what was forecast. A storm can be a bust in your backyard but generally area wide be good. There are storms that fail and screw the whole area, that to me is a bust. Let's just move on, I get where you are coming from. My yard got 8 and was always in the lower ranges so to me, it wasn't a total fail. I think people are tired of the debate, some maybe even trying to rile you up. Let's just all agree to disagree and end the debate on the storm that shall not be named and focus on the present / future.

Absolutely ripping snow right now, heaviest of this event. Big fluffy dendrites, going to add up quick.

That band in NW Allegheny looks impressive, 35dbz returns on radar. Hopefully something can fill in for areas further east.

Yeah, this looks similar to the January pattern. All 3 (GEPS, GEFS and EPS) show something similar. You can see the trough axis is a bit further west than January and some signs of southern stream action too. Not hard to envision a shortwave diving out of Canada over the ridge and meeting up with something ejecting out of the SW. This upcoming week is more a reshuffle, and we get this look by late next week so it's not some day 15 fantasy, it's already under day 10.

We should all give ourselves a pat on the back. Washing your laundry in cold water is environmentally friendly so I can only assume washing your car in 32.1 degree water also qualifies. TIDE approves of this message.

Looks like for the most part the advisories and warnings panned out well for the ice etc. Overall a well forecast storm, models did pretty well. GFS was to cold and aggressive pushing the front through but generally was the first to catch on that there would be some impact here once all the models had flipped way NW. I thought the 3K NAM did well with temperatures once we got 12-24 hours out. It nailed us basically sitting at 33 degrees for 12-16 hours yesterday. I didn't flip to below freezing until somewhere between 11:30-12:00am then when I checked the radar at 2am it was evident the front was progressing quicker than it had all day and the back-edge of the more steady stuff was already encroaching into OH. All that being said, for my yard nothing but a nuisance. Only thing memorable will be what could have been. 36 hours of precipitation and only 4-5 of it managed to be some sort of wintry weather. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad I don't have to deal with power outages and cutting up fallen trees but at the same time I don't track sunny days either, I like to see the interesting and extremes and this missed by a pretty narrow margin on that metric. So what's next? lol

00z NAM shows me above freezing until 11pm - 12am now. Can keeps getting kicked if that's correct.

<Samuel Jackson Impersonation> Wait I'm still plain raining and you mutha f#$@ckers are flipping to sleet... What the f$#k!?!? </Samuel Jackson Impersonation>

Took the trash out and it's pouring plain rain still. No ice on anything, pretty strong breeze so it feels awful.

Yeah, that and typically waves riding up a front tend to slow it down. Wasn't our Christmas Eve storm in 2020 a wave riding up a boundary?

Sorry, had to do it. With our track record with storms this might be my last best chance to use it this winter.

Can't hurt we are getting close to sunset either.

Maybe... or maybe the heat generated from the motors sets us back 6 hours.. Do you really want to take that risk?

Yes to early. It was clear yesterday we weren't dropping below 32 until at least 6pm-9pm. The short term models had a good handle on the front becoming stationary. I just hoped it would make a bit more progress.

They will probably flip before us lol

That's once it goes through, 12 hours to move 50 miles then it will blast 500 miles in 6 hours. Just the bad luck of the draw. lol 18z NAM seems to indicate an even later change over to freezing rain now...

Well so far 3K NAM has nailed the temperature situation showing temperatures in central / eastern Allegheny hovering at 33 degrees for almost 12 hours. I can't believe we couldn't get that eastern ridge to be a little flatter to get this through, then again we probably wouldn't be talking snow, just a severe ice storm. Remains to be seen what the effect will be overnight.

That lines up pretty well with where guidance indicates the front slows / gets hung up. It would make sense that areas just to the west of that line will have freezing rain for most of the day.

Right, some models just show basically (If Surface Temperature is <=32) and precipitation is liquid based on higher levels of the atmosphere being above 32. Then show as ice. It's literally just a total of how much qpf falls as rain while surface is at or below 32. Pivotal does have ice maps that utilize the FRAM method which is much more accurate at depicting actual accretion but they are for pay only. It's not a simple this % will accrete type deal, you need to take into account surface and air temperature, solar radiation, albedo of the object, winds, latent heat release and that effect on already accreted ice, how thick the warm layer is (is the droplet super cooled or above freezing) even the kinetic energy of the droplet when it hits the object. Needless to say it's a lot of complicated interdependent factors lol

Check the soundings on the 12z 3K NAM, I used the actual city as my point of reference and it has surface temperature a 33 degrees from 9am until about 9pm. I'd say let that be your point of reference, if you drop to 32 or colder before that 9pm then maybe we are getting colder faster. Crazy the front is stuck for 12 hours, then once it passes us seems to have no issue blowing off the coast, really a near miss here if it plays out like that. And when I say near miss I mean from a very impactful ice event. I guess we can prove my theory after the fact if counties just to the west of the Allegheny have severe icing but its more or less nuisance especially from the city east.

This part to me is even more fun than the tracking, checking obs / now casting. We don't have a lot of experience with this type of situation so it's going to be really interesting to see if models nailed the front getting hung up, or if they are not able to handle the low level cold air bleeding underneath. Typically on the other side of the apps low level cold is underdone and we still have snow pack in most of the area too. So we have that going for a possible quicker temperature drop. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure temperatures don't rise a few degrees while we are under the influence of the weak but not completely inconsequential warm nose.

I'm sort of with you on this, there's 9 months of the year for plain rain essentially with some thunderstorms sprinkled in but otherwise not interesting weather. I track to see the extremes and the unusual partially, but totally get that ethical debate that gets brought up like with people rooing for a hurricane landfall.

Yeah I think if 50 percent of the area / population is likely to experience the criteria then it triggers.