Central PA Winter 25/26 Discussion and Obs

[Voyager]

34 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

The monthly, seasonal, and annual climate summary reports for the official stations roughly sum things up.  See below for an example from January's report.

SKY COVER
POSSIBLE SUNSHINE (PERCENT)   MM
AVERAGE SKY COVER           0.62
NUMBER OF DAYS FAIR            4
NUMBER OF DAYS PC             16
NUMBER OF DAYS CLOUDY         11

AVERAGE RH (PERCENT)     63

WEATHER CONDITIONS. NUMBER OF DAYS WITH
THUNDERSTORM              0     MIXED PRECIP               0
HEAVY RAIN                0     RAIN                       1
LIGHT RAIN                5     FREEZING RAIN              0
LT FREEZING RAIN          1     HAIL                       0
HEAVY SNOW                2     SNOW                       4
LIGHT SNOW                7     SLEET                      2
FOG                      13     FOG W/VIS <= 1/4 MILE      4
HAZE                      3

Thanks! I'll have to look it up for December and February.

[pasnownut]

1 hour ago, Voyager said:

Actually, I was going to ask about that. Does anyone have stats on cloudy vs sunny days? Besides the cold and wind, it seems like it's been exceptionally cloudy this winter.

I agree and thought the same last week.  Cloudy has been king, and when there is snow cover, that makes me giddy for pack retention.  It's nice to see the sun today, but hope we get a couple more whacks at winter before spring peeps start peepin.

[pasnownut]

1 hour ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Yep, and that was my point. Despite it being a dark, overcast day yesterday, there was enough solar radiation to do it's damage on my snow cover. When the sun angle is lowest the radiation is really mitigated. That's why I covet holiday snow...it coincides with the best staying power season. 

We surely are like minded. 

[Jns2183]

That makes me wonder about the statistical anomaly of the stretch of winters from 92-96 (sans 94/95), which in additional to being 3 of State College’s top 5 snowiest winters (93/94 #1 with 109.3”) was the heyday of really big snowstorms back this way. 12/10/92, 93 Superstorm, and the 3/3/94 nor’easter were three events in basically two winters that delivered that kind of snow in this part of central PA. 

I bit the bullet and downloaded state colleges record daily weather going back to 1894 and built a model to run 100,000 simulations. Got it to pass all over fitting tests, have a 99% percentile correlation, 94% interweek variability correlation, 98% intra- seasonal correlation based on auto-lag correlations. To have repeat of winter 1992-1993 and 1993-1994 back to back order not important it is a 1:1666 year event.

To repeat the first four years of the 1960s 1:768 year event.

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[Mount Joy Snowman]

1 hour ago, Voyager said:

Thanks! I'll have to look it up for December and February.

Not sure if you know where to find them but here's a direct link to January's, just click the "Previous Version" link near the top to view prior months.  Enjoy.

National Weather Service

[Mount Joy Snowman]

GFS with three separate possible snow events of varying types and intensities over the next six days.  Goes big for Monday's bowling bowl.

[pasnownut]

Go look at nooner GFS snow maps through next week....

She's tryin to go out w/ a bang....

 

[pasnownut]

2 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

GFS with three separate possible snow events of varying types and intensities over the next six days.  Goes big for Monday's bowling bowl.

lol.  just saw the same.  Part of me wonders if the trailing vort on Friday ends up being the real deal for this weekend.  Reminder that this is what just happened last week. Lead vort faded and set stage for trailing.  Huh.  Atmospheric memory for the win.

 

[Jns2183]

The next project I started working on gathering daily weather data for about 20-30 locations throughout the mid Atlantic and northeast that have a 100 year history or more to attempt to brake down the sub types of miller a and miller b and answer tough questions like "if a storm hits like yesterday, how does that effect the odds of our winter going forward?". I'm sure it has a giant temporal component but we shall see. Below are percentage chance of storms occuring by day in March and a decade regime change in snowfall distributions for the fragmented Altoona area

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[Jns2183]

March 15 is the cliff

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[Itstrainingtime]

8 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

GFS with three separate possible snow events of varying types and intensities over the next six days.  Goes big for Monday's bowling bowl.

 

8 minutes ago, pasnownut said:

Go look at nooner GFS snow maps through next week....

She's tryin to go out w/ a bang....

 

High is in the perfect location for Monday's potential event. We'll need that look to hold to get what we want. Precarious situation with that but at least we're not worried about a redeveloper type of thing. 

[Itstrainingtime]

The "snow hater" met from a local university seems completely out for Thursday but does seem interested in early next week. Interesting. 

[pasnownut]

25 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

 

High is in the perfect location for Monday's potential event. We'll need that look to hold to get what we want. Precarious situation with that but at least we're not worried about a redeveloper type of thing. 

+'s

zonal flow makes this less "diggy" and as you state, as long as HP doesnt get to easily displaced, one would think front end potential has merit.

themrally it looks to be decent

SLP rides the baroclinic zone

-'s

Its late season and based on flow, one could see this eeking south (as well as tendencies of this winter so far)

Based on climo and NAO being solidly pos, one could also see how the warm nose that is evident, can do its dirty work (just like last weekend) and can nuke our precious thermals)

 

 

[pasnownut]

I'll stay invested for another week, before I start spring cleaning the cave.  It's been a good winter based on snow OTG, but we've tracked a good bit, and have not had great returns, so I'm gettin a little tired.  any of the next couple events throw down some white gold, I'll be giving a solid A for overall appeal, while knowing how lucky we really were for the 5 week solid deep ass winter feel that we had.  

[Jns2183]

A post about increasing sun angle and how it affects rates needed to accumulate on asphalt.

It truly brings home the point that the 1993 storm was in its own league beyond even what we informed people think. It needed to overcome 2.3x more solar radiation than mid January and 1.5x more than mid February.

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[Jns2183]

We unfortunately just had a triple phaser with the Halloween snow awhile back. I doubt we get another one for another 20-30 years.

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[Superstorm]

1993 Superstorm is a true anomally.

[Itstrainingtime]

52 minutes ago, Jns2183 said:

A post about increasing sun angle and how it affects rates needed to accumulate on asphalt.

It truly brings home the point that the 1993 storm was in its own league beyond even what we informed people think. It needed to overcome 2.3x more solar radiation than mid January and 1.5x more than mid February.

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25 minutes ago, Superstorm said:

1993 Superstorm is a true anomally.

It took 18" of snow/sleet together to keep a solid snow cover for a full week after 3/13/1993. If it wasn't for all of that sleet it would have been gone in 2-3 days. 

[mahantango#1]

2 hours ago, Jns2183 said:

A post about increasing sun angle and how it affects rates needed to accumulate on asphalt.

It truly brings home the point that the 1993 storm was in its own league beyond even what we informed people think. It needed to overcome 2.3x more solar radiation than mid January and 1.5x more than mid February.

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I remember how bad the roads were several days after the storm. It was like driving over a washboard.

[Voyager]

4 hours ago, Jns2183 said:

March 15 is the cliff

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I just saw a couple posts on Facebook that nearly pushed me over the edge. Both of them talked about another PV split, and that after a bit of a warmup, winter returns and may last into early April. 

They actually made me hide all weather posts on Facebook from pro and amateur mets. I can't take the depression any more.

I just can't...

[pasnownut]

43 minutes ago, mahantango#1 said:

I remember how bad the roads were several days after the storm. It was like driving over a washboard.

Wont be as fun this time but man would it be nice to wrap up with a doozy. 

[canderson]

The river is pretty wild. Weird jetty currents with ice flowing against the current. And massive jams on the shores of huge icebergs. 

[Yardstickgozinya]

1 hour ago, Voyager said:

I just saw a couple posts on Facebook that nearly pushed me over the edge. Both of them talked about another PV split, and that after a bit of a warmup, winter returns and may last into early April. 

They actually made me hide all weather posts on Facebook from pro and amateur mets. I can't take the depression any more.

I just can't...

It looks to be a little later than I expected. This is the time period that i've mentioned once or twice. 

[Yardstickgozinya]

5 hours ago, Itstrainingtime said:

The "snow hater" met from a local university seems completely out for Thursday but does seem interested in early next week. Interesting. 

I'm already getting texts like this from my friends. So I know that something has been made about it on social media. You have to excuse the first two texts there.Everyone likes breaking my balls. 

[717WeatherLover]

6 hours ago, pasnownut said:

We surely are like minded. 

I will ALWAYS be a more snow is better person, but.....ever since my civil engineering husband took the plunge and had solar panels applied to our house we have a nightly/weekly discussion on how many, what we call "Jabloops" have been credited to our PP&L account.  My husband, a civil engineer waited until the solar engineer in his company pulled the plug and purchased solar himself. I say PURCHASED because there is NO way that we would do that other way that let the solar company get the tax credits. "I" am the weather scientist (USCGA Class of 1987, Applied Science). Being an engineer, he required them to "over design" our panels to 130% of our needs.   I checked it with him over the weekend and as I expected the north facing panels provided very little since the last storm.  Fortunately the majority of our panels are on the south side.  I just wanted to see how long it took for all of the panels to be snow free.
 

[mahantango#1]

1 hour ago, pasnownut said:

Wont be as fun this time but man would it be nice to wrap up with a doozy. 

Yes, one last hurrah!

[Voyager]

11 minutes ago, mahantango#1 said:

Yes, one last hurrah!

I don't have any hurrahs left in me...