Central PA Winter 25/26 Discussion and Obs

[AccuChris]

12z model cycle was not very winter-friendly. The good news is run-to-run consistency is basically non-existent beyond Day 5 it seems


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[anotherman]

Thought this was a curious post by MU. Is he implying that one day in the low 50s qualifies as a “torch period”? I know he loves his warm weather but it seemed weirdly defensive to me and wasn’t sure who he was addressing. 

Definitely annoying. Go forecast in Georgia or something….

[Itstrainingtime]

53 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Thought this was a curious post by MU. Is he implying that one day in the low 50s qualifies as a “torch period”? I know he loves his warm weather but it seemed weirdly defensive to me and wasn’t sure who he was addressing. 

I think (?) he's been getting a lot of negative comments to some of his posts recently. There's been a noticeable difference in his "tone" over the past couple of months. I've really pulled back on following and posting because of it. I'm pretty sure that this post is probably in response to people's comments. Regardless, I haven't been sharing as much from him lately for a variety of reasons. I'm not trying to poke the bear so to speak. 

[AccuChris]

I think (?) he's been getting a lot of negative comments to some of his posts recently. There's been a noticeable difference in his "tone" over the past couple of months. I've really pulled back on following and posting because of it. I'm pretty sure that this post is probably in response to people's comments. Regardless, I haven't been sharing as much from him lately for a variety of reasons. I'm not trying to poke the bear so to speak. 

I miss Eric Horst. He was a great mentor to me when I was a met student at Millersville over 20 years ago now. Never emotional, just was purely objective and called it like it was. No agenda, no personal feelings. The best way to get back at keyboard warriors is to simply make your forecast and let the verification do the talking


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[TheClimateChanger]

1 hour ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Thought this was a curious post by MU. Is he implying that one day in the low 50s qualifies as a “torch period”? I know he loves his warm weather but it seemed weirdly defensive to me and wasn’t sure who he was addressing. 

Low 50s in northern Maine is record/near-record warmth this time of the year. How much hotter does it need to be to qualify for a torch? 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

18 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Low 50s in northern Maine is record/near-record warmth this time of the year. How much hotter does it need to be to qualify for a torch? 

I mean maaaaybe, perhaps, possibly, mayhaps......but not really.  For me personally, no I do not even remotely consider 1 or 2 days in the low 50s in mid-December to be a "torch period".  I would also point out that he forecasts for the LSV, not Maine haha, and I assume the people to whom he was responding were also inquiring about the local area, not Canada.  I digress.

[Itstrainingtime]

Pribula on the move again:

https://www.ydr.com/story/sports/college/penn-state/football/2025/12/18/former-penn-state-football-qb-beau-pribula-to-transfer-from-missouri/87819340007/

[Itstrainingtime]

22 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

I mean maaaaybe, perhaps, possibly, mayhaps......but not really.  For me personally, no I do not even remotely consider 1 or 2 days in the low 50s in mid-December to be a "torch period".  I would also point out that he forecasts for the LSV, not Maine haha, and I assume the people to whom he was responding were also inquiring about the local area, not Canada.  I digress.

You handled that a whole lot better than I would have.   

First, a "period" of hot/cold/warm weather is not a day. That's just silly. Second, it's kind of a weak-sauce torch to begin with. Temps much of the afternoon tomorrow are going to be very close to normal, falling below normal by sunset. 

 

[Itstrainingtime]

53 minutes ago, AccuChris said:

I miss Eric Horst. He was a great mentor to me when I was a met student at Millersville over 20 years ago now. Never emotional, just was purely objective and called it like it was. No agenda, no personal feelings. The best way to get back at keyboard warriors is to simply make your forecast and let the verification do the talking


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I got to meet him as a senior at Penn Manor while studying met in high school. It was a brief exchange but one that left a lasting impression on me. 

I consider Horst and Paul Knight (Weather World lore) to be the 2 greatest mets I've watched/listened to in my lifetime. Both were 100% objective and deadly accurate. The Blizzard of 1996 - as I recall, almost every model showed that storm missing us to the south pretty much the entire week leading up to the storm. It was only in the final 48 hours or so that they all suddenly adjusted north. Days before that on Weather World, Paul said in that night's extended forecast that the southern half of PA was going to get obliterated. He was the first to call it...and history shows he was spot on. That wasn't the only time he went against everyone/everything else and was right. 

Horst was uncanny at predicting events that featured snow mixing or changing over to ice and rain - he would harp on that for days leading up to the event when no other model or met would see it. Like Knight, he was right just about every. single. time. 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

16 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

You handled that a whole lot better than I would have.   

First, a "period" of hot/cold/warm weather is not a day. That's just silly. Second, it's kind of a weak-sauce torch to begin with. Temps much of the afternoon tomorrow are going to be very close to normal, falling below normal by sunset. 

 

Haha believe me, I strongly considered not engaging at all.  The points you make are exactly correct, and why I made my post.  His entire post just felt strange to me.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

29 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Pribula on the move again:

https://www.ydr.com/story/sports/college/penn-state/football/2025/12/18/former-penn-state-football-qb-beau-pribula-to-transfer-from-missouri/87819340007/

Virginia Tech?

[Itstrainingtime]

1 minute ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Virginia Tech?

Have to figure that JF was/is going in hard after him...

[MAG5035]

2 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

You handled that a whole lot better than I would have.   

First, a "period" of hot/cold/warm weather is not a day. That's just silly. Second, it's kind of a weak-sauce torch to begin with. Temps much of the afternoon tomorrow are going to be very close to normal, falling below normal by sunset. 

 

Agreed, I know I’m not going to nitpick what constitutes a “torch period” regarding the weather from about yesterday thru the first half of tomorrow or so. Given how potent of a southerly flow this system has that is going to tracking well north of PA, it could definitely be warmer out ahead of it here. LSV might briefly climb into the high 50s prior to FROPA tomorrow morning before a brief but potent return to some below average temps later tomorrow.

With that said, we do have an actual torch period setting up through at least the Christmas to New Year’s period… centered on the central US. Really about the only teleconnection we have going for us in this timeframe is a developing negative NAO.. which acts to keep significant warm anomalies at bay in the northeastern US. The degree of which is what modelling is back and forth about. I think in play here in Central PA are a couple of waves that may have enough cold in place to produce some kind of a wintry mix type scenario. But overall looking like more of a transient/brief cold enforcement vs the kind of persistent cold temps we had the first half of the month. I’m overall kind of pessimistic about this period, as I feel the mostly +EPO and now significantly -PNA are going to be a stronger teleconnection influence vs the -NAO/neutral AO. Keeps very cold anomalies bottled up in western Canada and storm track continues to be northern branch dominated with little southern stream action as evidenced here by a very dry southeastern US.

GEFS v Euro EPS temp anomalies (10 day avg centered beginning of Christmas week to New Year’s Day)