Central PA Spring 2026 Discussion/Obs Thread

[Yardstickgozinya]

Everybody in this forum's compassionate person. Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt and not one single gripe. Orbit of excitement is going to change any of it g********

I came back and edited this because not everybody in this forum is compassionate towards life and property but I do believe  or sub is. 

[WmsptWx]

What is going on?

[Yardstickgozinya]

Hopefully nothing now. 

 

[Yardstickgozinya]

Just observing where things we're heading.

[Yardstickgozinya]

Starting to come together, Pepper, starting to come together. The frontogenesis  starting at  6:41pm up until the last frame of the gif at 8:51 pm  was pretty fricking, incredible. I wanted to include the sandwich RGB loop, but the files are too large.  

 

[Yardstickgozinya]

Sandwich RGB . Sorry, I had  to cut off the timestamp, keys and a lot of the edges to get the file small enough. I've also included a lightning map with the last hour of detected strikes. 

 

[MAG5035]

7 hours ago, canderson said:

Thanks for this. Remarkable this occurred up here back then. Today? Much more likely with climate changes. 

The May 31st, 1985 tornado outbreak was more severe and remarkable than 1998 or any other more recent PA involved outbreak by a pretty sizeable margin. That outbreak spun up 43 tornadoes and killed 89 people (1000 injured) in PA, NY, OH and Ontario (65 alone in PA), produced PA’s only ever EF5 tornado (Wheatland), and also produced what I’m pretty sure was one of the widest tornadoes ever recorded in the US at the time (Moshannon State Forest). 

Couple screen grabs below but there’s some really informative links about this outbreak 

CTP’s 35th anniversary link- https://www.weather.gov/ctp/TornadoOutbreak_may311985

New interactive link they made for the 40th anniversary last year collaborated with NWS Pittsburgh, State College, Buffalo, and Cleveland  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e8c12f670d5648a9b64877f42660eeeb

 

 

[Yardstickgozinya]

12:30pm SPC update. Not a whole lot of change.  

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk.html

[Yardstickgozinya]

Starting to see initiation of a fleet of cells out ahead of the front in Alabama at 2:00AM probably not good situation. 

[Jns2183]

The May 31st, 1985 tornado outbreak was more severe and remarkable than 1998 or any other more recent PA involved outbreak by a pretty sizeable margin. That outbreak spun up 43 tornadoes and killed 89 people (1000 injured) in PA, NY, OH and Ontario (65 alone in PA), produced PA’s only ever EF5 tornado (Wheatland), and also produced what I’m pretty sure was one of the widest tornadoes ever recorded in the US at the time (Moshannon State Forest). 
Couple screen grabs below but there’s some really informative links about this outbreak 
CTP’s 35th anniversary link- https://www.weather.gov/ctp/TornadoOutbreak_may311985
New interactive link they made for the 40th anniversary last year collaborated with NWS Pittsburgh, State College, Buffalo, and Cleveland  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e8c12f670d5648a9b64877f42660eeeb
 


 

The old two mile wide long track ef4 going over the absolute most mountainous terrain in Pennsylvania like it was Alabama. If you ever get a chance to go look at some of the re-analysis anamoly for that day in a zoomed in fashion. The amount of absolute bonger values you get actually would almost make that tornado feel inevitable. It's that storm and the ef3 plus damage they found on mountains out west above 10000 feet that makes me laugh when people say they're safe because of the terrain they're in.

Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk

[MAG5035]

Still trying to gauge the degree of which the severe potential gets realized tomorrow. High res guidance seems to be tightening the window when the best shear coincides with the surge of some modest CAPE into the Sus Valley, more in the late morning/early afternoon. HRRR looked like it was toying around with some discrete and/or quasi linear convection during that timeframe, while the 3k NAM doesn’t have much at all until the frontal passage. FROPA looked slated for roughly the 4-8pm timeframe west to east in C-PA. Discrete development out ahead depends on if there’s any kind of ample daytime heating via some breaks in the clouds, something I’m not quite sure happens in earnest in PA. Line with the FROPA will be more purely dynamics driven, but we’ll have to see how well it gets organized 

Also lost in all the attention to the severe is energy rounding the base of the trough during tomorrow generating a secondary wave of heavier precip riding up behind the front. So suddenly it looks quite snowy in at least the western half of PA early to mid Mon evening. This could drive a changeover to a period of snow all the way into the Sus Valley. Given the broad model support I’d be surprised if CTP didn’t at least headline the Laurels and north central Alleghenies for advisories. There’s support for the I-99 corridor as well. That will also be interesting to watch evolve tomorrow in addition to the severe threat. 

GFS vs Euro

3k NAM vs RGEM

[Yardstickgozinya]

1 hour ago, Jns2183 said:

The old two mile wide long track ef4 going over the absolute most mountainous terrain in Pennsylvania like it was Alabama. If you ever get a chance to go look at some of the re-analysis anamoly for that day in a zoomed in fashion. The amount of absolute bonger values you get actually would almost make that tornado feel inevitable. It's that storm and the ef3 plus damage they found on mountains out west above 10000 feet that makes me laugh when people say they're safe because of the terrain they're in.

Sent from my SM-S731U using Tapatalk
 

I  hiked one of tornado trails as a kid with my older sister. I don't exactly remember the year but she will. I believe it was 88 or 89 and the trail was still very obvious. I have pictures of the trails and myself in front of the plaques there.  I will eventually scan and post. I initially stated that it was the Albion tornado trail but that is not correct.I do know it was near the town of Albion and was a destination to hike the trails.