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Western PA/Pittsburgh Winter 2021/22 Discussion


meatwad
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Probably too late in the game to get to Pittsburgh, but it is now starting to show heavy snow in parts of the NWS office's CWA. Even the much warmer NAM now brings 8-12"+ to Mercer, Venango, and Forest Counties. Far cry from the 3-6" in the WSW. Might be able to get those higher totals to come down another row of counties further south though.

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I don't really understand why the forecast still has mid and upper 30s on Thursday? Even the warmer NAM has temps below freezing by daybreak, and drops it into the upper 20s during the afternoon Thursday. GFS shows mid 20s Thursday afternoon. If temps are 25-28F, that also calls into question the theory that the ice won't accumulate much at 31F, no?

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5 minutes ago, Ahoff said:

Saw the WSW was hoisted and Ron Smiley was saying he was expecting more snow than what was forecasted.  He's usually rather conservative, but pretty good about totals, so that's interesting.  Figured that meant the models went in our favor.

They were taking victory laps left and right in the MLK storm, even though the total fell within every outlets range.

If they want to score a win though, this might be the storm to do it. Somewhere from PGH to the NW figures to really cash in. But it would be a bold call at this point to slide 6”+ type totals into the city. 

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1 minute ago, Burghblizz said:

They were taking victory laps left and right in the MLK storm, even though the total fell within every outlets range.

If they want to score a win though, this might be the storm to do it. Somewhere from PGH to the NW figures to really cash in. But it would be a bold call at this point to slide 6”+ type totals into the city. 

Looking at the NAM it wouldn’t take much. I do remember a couple of systems where the front and cold air crashed through much faster than forecasted and we got blasted with more snow than expected. 
 

The NAM is a really ugly look though and hopefully is overdoing freezing rain and is more sleet.

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4 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I don't really understand why the forecast still has mid and upper 30s on Thursday? Even the warmer NAM has temps below freezing by daybreak, and drops it into the upper 20s during the afternoon Thursday. GFS shows mid 20s Thursday afternoon. If temps are 25-28F, that also calls into question the theory that the ice won't accumulate much at 31F, no?

All of the globals except the GFS have us near 40 at daybreak, so we’ll have to see what the 12z runs of those do.

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1 minute ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I saw this in the Ohio thread from a TV meteorologist in Cleveland. Brings a foot and a half of snow all the way to the Ohio River in eastern Ohio... what model is showing that? I thought this might raise spirits here though. Lol.

Screenshot_20220201-075713_Facebook.jpg

Damn…and his foot line is IMBY.

I wouldnt look too much into it even if he is a good met. Our locals lose attention to detail quickly when it’s out of the viewing area. 

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2 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I saw this in the Ohio thread from a TV meteorologist in Cleveland. Brings a foot and a half of snow all the way to the Ohio River in eastern Ohio... what model is showing that? I thought this might raise spirits here though. Lol.

Screenshot_20220201-075713_Facebook.jpg

I bet his in house model counts sleet

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It looks like the NWS updated the expected snowfall map. Looks like totals have been bumped up a bit. I think it looks pretty reasonable at the moment. The 2.3 inch amount is for downtown Pittsburgh. The airport would be closer to the 3" line - probably checking in about 2.8 or 2.9 taking this forecast literally. I'd say it looks good, but I might place the initial over/under value for the airport closer to 4". The NWS is also forecasting the potential for 0.2-0.3" of ice through much of the area.

Expected Snowfall - Official NWS Forecast

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3 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

It looks like the NWS updated the expected snowfall map. Looks like totals have been bumped up a bit. I think it looks pretty reasonable at the moment. The 2.3 inch amount is for downtown Pittsburgh. The airport would be closer to the 3" line - probably checking in about 2.8 or 2.9 taking this forecast literally. I'd say it looks good, but I might place the initial over/under value for the airport closer to 4". The NWS is also forecasting the potential for 0.2-0.3" of ice through much of the area.

Expected Snowfall - Official NWS Forecast

Really I think with the current trends, we could see all zones get bumped up one tier. Might be more in line with a blend of the NAM/GFS at this point. Would also coordinate better with the snowfall map from NWS CLE which has 6-8 in the southern counties.

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6 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

It looks like the NWS updated the expected snowfall map. Looks like totals have been bumped up a bit. I think it looks pretty reasonable at the moment. The 2.3 inch amount is for downtown Pittsburgh. The airport would be closer to the 3" line - probably checking in about 2.8 or 2.9 taking this forecast literally. I'd say it looks good, but I might place the initial over/under value for the airport closer to 4". The NWS is also forecasting the potential for 0.2-0.3" of ice through much of the area.

Expected Snowfall - Official NWS Forecast

That’s significantly less bullish than they were on the ice potential earlier. The previous package had over a quarter inch for much of the metro.

They’ve also updated the zones to include a lot more mix during the day Thursday (with sleet more prevalent than zr).

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5 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

It looks like the NWS updated the expected snowfall map. Looks like totals have been bumped up a bit. I think it looks pretty reasonable at the moment. The 2.3 inch amount is for downtown Pittsburgh. The airport would be closer to the 3" line - probably checking in about 2.8 or 2.9 taking this forecast literally. I'd say it looks good, but I might place the initial over/under value for the airport closer to 4". The NWS is also forecasting the potential for 0.2-0.3" of ice through much of the area.

Expected Snowfall - Official NWS Forecast

There is an NAM sleet map that shows a foot of sleet. I wouldn’t count on that verifying.

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3 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

That’s significantly less bullish than they were on the ice potential earlier. The previous package had over a quarter inch for much of the metro.

Actually they just changed it. I was wrong. Now they show generally less than a tenth of inch of icing. I had to refresh my browser for the new map.

Most Likely Ice Accumulation

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