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Central PA - February 2016


MAG5035

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What a crazy storm this ended up being from a meteorological stand point and just the entire scale of impact on the social side. Many places will be buried for days with a long wait for some areas to even see a plow. This is one for the record books across the board and really happy that most people cashed in. 

 

That being said, I want to apologize for the pathetic forecast I gave for almost the entire sub forum. This was a valuable lesson in discounting a model (In this case the NAM) because of my opinion of it being inferior. Despite the fact the NAM kept coming with a northern shift, I kept discounting which is a big no no and no excuse on my part as a meteorologist and forecaster. I feel bummed on how bad I screwed this one up for you guys north of Rt 30 up to I80. I had a good overall handle on things south of 30 since that's the area I grew up and are accustomed to, but still, I need to be better and take a hint when a model isn;t jumping around and was as rock steady as the NAM was. I give a round of applause to that guidance. That and the GFS were on their game. Hope y'all can trust me next time for my opinion.

 

On another note, will have the snowfall contest up to date by this afternoon and will put out a summary so far after the big event. Some people just got a real good start to that one haha

The questions I ask my students (I am Adjunct faculty at a local college): did you try your best? Do you see anything you could have done better? Did you look at all the variables? and more importantly what did you learn?  After that and only after that look at what you got right. FWIW you did better that most and you didn't have huge fookin' ego.

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State closed tomorrow.

Damn, really?

Millersville just said they will not open until noon, but to be honest the place is a wreck still so I really don't see how they plan on it being possible. Going to be hell for commuters

My car is in a parking lot with 30" of snow still

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Most schools will try to open or give the old college and try to open. I know from my work that  colleges will attempt to be more business like and try to keep the doors open. Esp, if they have students that dorm. Idle students will get into trouble.

 

IF a school is trying to open at 12 they are trying to have night classes run. A lost night class is like loosing a whole week of class.

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This was literally impossible to forecast up here. Wes and Will, great mets like yourself, thought MDT would be lucky to get 8".

No one on this planet expected us to get a record storm, much less 30.2". That's once in a generation stuff.

 

You guys all missed DT's update after midnight Friday night after the storm was ongoing. I think he was so busy downgrading Richmond's snowfall (which they ended up getting slammed from the backlash later Sat anyways!!) that he didn't bump up any totals in southern PA when it was way more obvious at that point that the NAM/SREFs were on to the northern trend and other models had been starting to see it. 

 

post-1507-0-09571200-1453678680_thumb.jp 

 

On another note, I actually came into Harrisburg (Paxtonia section) late this morning to help a relative dig out this afternoon. It's insane how much snow there is. All the main roads (22/322/I-81) were in surprisingly good shape though. 

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Damn, really?

Millersville just said they will not open until noon, but to be honest the place is a wreck still so I really don't see how they plan on it being possible. Going to be hell for commuters

My car is in a parking lot with 30" of snow still

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Shipp is closed tomorrow fwiw.
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Au6Mxip.jpg 

ZK5H14J.jpgThe first picture was from my store that of course we had to open today cause bidness. Keep in mind those pilons are over 4ft tall and the 2nd picture was our parking lot. It had been plowed sometime Sat. morning but it still took me about 4hrs to shovel out since the plow never showed up for me to get to work

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You guys all missed DT's update after midnight Friday night after the storm was ongoing. I think he was so busy downgrading Richmond's snowfall (which they ended up getting slammed from the backlash later Sat anyways!!) that he didn't bump up any totals in southern PA when it was way more obvious at that point that the NAM/SREFs were on to the northern trend and other models had been starting to see it.

12510382_974464545934137_8504537649822715572_n.jpg

On another note, I actually came into Harrisburg (Paxtonia section) late this morning to help a relative dig out this afternoon. It's insane how much snow there is. All the main roads (22/322/I-81) were in surprisingly good shape though.

That map is awful even for a revised forecast.
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Au6Mxip.jpg 

ZK5H14J.jpgThe first picture was from my store that of course we had to open today cause bidness. Keep in mind those pilons are over 4ft tall and the 2nd picture was our parking lot. It had been plowed sometime Sat. morning but it still took me about 4hrs to shovel out since the plow never showed up for me to get to work

Jesus, they opened? How f'n stupid.

"Hey guys there's 2.5' snow out but I need a new padfolio, let's go to Staples!"

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That map is awful even for a revised forecast.

 

The S&S maps made more sense...lol

 

Aside from all that, the globals still are showing a low along the east coast or out at sea during the Thursday/Friday time frame. Does it have potential, or is it likely to be a fish storm?

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Same with about 20 miles southeast of us here.

It was painful watching the 30-35dbz returns dissipate to like 15-20dbz as they pushed North. I measured about 4.5, I work 30 miles South, so I betting they will have some nice piles of snow when I get to work tomorrow. Hopefully our corridor can score sometime this winter as you mentioned.

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The S&S maps made more sense...lol

 

Aside from all that, the globals still are showing a low along the east coast or out at sea during the Thursday/Friday time frame. Does it have potential, or is it likely to be a fish storm?

A met can probably give a more detail, but I would think given the NAO and AO will be neutral to positive in that time frame there probably isn't really anything to keep it from coming in further NW. The pattern is sorta progressive though so it would take a well timed phase \ storm development to achieve that, and at this point I'd say its just as likely the Northern stream just kicks it out to sea.

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The S&S maps made more sense...lol

 

Aside from all that, the globals still are showing a low along the east coast or out at sea during the Thursday/Friday time frame. Does it have potential, or is it likely to be a fish storm?

 

Not too excited about this particular one for our area currently, but def bears watching as these do like to creep back into the picture. I do like the 500mb ridge axis for this one, as it's progged in the more standard positioning (up through Idaho). Still looks more progressive and not much digging from the northern stream wave though. 

 

I'm more interested in the D8-10 timeframe, as I had mentioned to start this thread last night. Sure enough todays 12 and 18z GFS runs a storm much further south (with the 18z delivering a beauty to C-PA, for example). Euro seems to dig in the west more before running a deep low into the upper lakes at hr 240. GFS ended up having yesterdays storm pretty close to reality considering the range at D8-10.. while Euro was all over the place at that point. Hard to say which direction models go the next couple days, teleconnections won't be as favorable... but I do see some kind of storm signal in that timeframe.  

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Canderson will appreciate this article.....Good ole' Harrisburg

"Residents of Penn Street in Harrisburg awoke Sunday morning to a message from city officials to move their vehicles if they wanted their street plowed.

But frustrated residents wondered: How could they move vehicles that were buried under more than two feet of snow? And how could they escape an unplowed street?"

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/01/harrisburg_residents_penn_stre.html#incart_big-photo

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Looks like they did not count CarlislePaWx's totals. 

12513805_932873906790775_553859605480098

 

Well, bubbler, you are correct.  They chose not to include my observation.  I have a pretty good feeling I may know why they ignored me.  If you look closely at the above obs list, pay particular attention to the towns that reported 26.0".  You will see Carlisle, PA listed.  You can note that their observation was 9.0" less than my observation.  Well, here is where is starts to get interesting...

 

The observation site listed as Carlisle, PA is from an NWS COOP site, the Carlisle water plant.  Despite the fact that I am a certified spotter, I actually have not reported noteworthy obs to CTP for more than 6 years.  I actually registered myself with CTP around 8 years ago when I lived in a different part of Carlisle.  I was assigned an ID for reporting.  I can't tell you why, but I actually never used the ID because I stopped actively reporting to them a short time afterwards.  My research, done several years ago about the water plant, seemed to indicate that they became a cooperative site about 10 years ago.  So, you might say to yourself, well the NWS accepts public obs and social media obs and puts them in these storm reports all the time.

 

First off, I can tell you that I strongly believe that the water plant's observation is in error.  That's not to say that they didn't measure 26" and then reported it, but rather that they did not take 6-hour board measurements throughout the storm because I believe it is highly unlikely that the station was manned during the actual storm.  I think they just took one measurement this morning, at 0700, and it was just one ground measurement.  I'm not going to go off and call them a liar because what reason would they have to give inaccurate measurements when they are a COOP site?

 

But, here's where this gets really interesting, and why I believe CTP was unwilling to accept my observation:  the Carlisle Water Plant is located literally 0.25 miles due south of my home.  I can see the plant from my back yard!  We have a creek and some woods that separates us.  When I moved here four years ago I had no idea a COOP site was so close to me.  

 

So, I have a few ideas I'm pondering as to how to go about satisfying myself with this.  The first, and simplest, is to pay the water plant a visit and to find out exactly how they produced the snow ob they submitted.  I'd like to meet them anyway and to introduce myself as a fellow observer.  Once I know the answer to that important question I can decide just how I want to proceed in communicating with CTP.  It just so happens that I have "connections" where I might need them in order to help my cause.  It's not with anyone inside the CTP office.  Rather, my best friend going back to my teenage years just so happens to be the meteorologist-in-charge of the Blacksburg, VA NWS office!  I am fairly certain that if I went to him and asked for some help, at the very least he could put me in touch with the appropriate person inside CTP that would handle matters like this.  I'm pretty sure every major NWS office has one individual who acts as a liaison between their office and all the cooperative observers that report to that office.

 

So, sorry for being so long-winded with this.  But, I would welcome any comments and/or suggestions regarding my approach to resolving this matter.  As it turns out, another coop observer in the town right next to me, Mechanicsburg, reported 36.9" for his total.  I should think that this would more than help validate my pursuit of attempting to not invalidate the water plant's ob, but at least be able to have my ob counted in the list.  You guys also saw the reports from my son who was about five miles away from me.  He unofficially measured 37".  With his 37" and my 35", it's pretty hard to imagine that the 26" measurement from the water plant could be correct.  I look forward to the comments from any of you who might choose to share your opinions! 

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