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Pittsburgh, PA Fall 2024 Thread


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This run of warm weather has been incredible but I am starting to get concerned that there is not even a hint of cold in fantasy land. I don't mind if the rest of November is warm but you'd think at some point this has to break in the other direction at least temporarily?

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I believe it was 2010 when we had a rather warm November, and then as soon as December hit, it felt like winter had arrived.  I don't know if we're in store for a repeat of that pattern, which ended up being a strong La Nina episode following an El Nino.  Right now we're in a very mild negative period which is technically neutral (-0.2), but a La Nina of the weaker type is slightly favored.  This could end up being a net-neutral winter, however.

Looking back for any kind of correlation, I found 10 net neutral winters since 1990.  The average snowfall over those neutral periods was 44.8, which is slightly above our 30-year average.

Half of the ten were below 30" of snow while the other half were above 50" of snow.  Kind of an interesting dynamic there.  Three were above 60" (1993, 1994, and 2014).

Of those neutrals, only three followed an El Nino.  Two of those three were 1993 and 2004, with 72.1" and 54.2" of snow, respectively.  The third was 2020 with 22.4" of snow.

If it ends up being a true weak La Nina, well, the snowfall history isn't quite as favorable, but it is a smaller sample size, too.  We've only had five La Ninas that finished above a -1.0 threshold.  None of those five involved snowfall higher than our 30-year average, and only one was right around the number (2009 with 41" of snow total).  The three were in the 30s, which wouldn't be bad given our recent history, but the last was 2023 and that was a paltry year for snow, still fresh in our minds (17.6").

To be clear, I don't know if this means anything, but it's interesting to check the data and try to include that history into a prediction for the winter.  We fully expect a warm winter, in general, so predicting under the average is probably a safer bet, regardless.

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