Spring is 20 days early

Well, I got 31" in that storm last year. Ain't topping that. That said, as a weather geek, this is a much more impressive storm. Just moves through a little fast to get into crazy totals. But it'll be one of those storms where 15" or 25" doesn't make much of a difference. With the winds, your going to have deep drifts and places where the grass is showing. Gonna be hard to measure, really.

But boy will the satellite images be beautiful. And there will be complete white out at the peak. Meteorological speaking, the most impressive nor'easter since 1993. Blowing up later so that's the only reason it doesn't reach that status. Still, a strong triple phaser with a crazy high pressure zone to the north. Quite a pressure gradient.
 
They're predicting 3-6 inches here.
The abrupt return to cold weather the last few days, has ruined all of the beautiful flowers that were blooming in my yard. Ma nature still does goofy things
 
Gg and other Floridians should be prepared for a nasty line of storms tonight.

The 3-6" call for Pitt seems like a good call, but be warned, this one has a high bust potential for you. In both directions. Every major storm has some "0 to 20" type areas. And Pitt is in it on this one. But more likely to see more snow as you go north and east from the city, less as you go south and west.

Basically you'll start of with overrunning type lightish snow, west to east, this evening (before it ramps up for others). If it gets past you, that's probably all she wrote. At some point it'll stall and sit a while as the coastal takes over, and then get heavier. If you are under where it stalls, you'll get more. But it's hard to say how far east it gets before that happens.

18-24" here, per the national weather service. But wouldn't take much westward adjustment to have rain drastically lower my total. Harrisburg, Reading, Scranton, etc. are the "can't miss" areas. 10-30", depending where the bands and dry slots set up.
 
pcray1231 wrote:
Harrisburg, Reading, Scranton, etc. are the "can't miss" areas.
Click to expand...

Super. At least it will help flows I guess.

Gonna get the last room of my house painting done this coming weekend. When the weather does break for good, I'm going on a fishing "binge" come April, to quote Frank Nale.
 
It will help, some. Ten inches of snow is the equivalent to one inch of rain, or so they say. So, this storm is really just a band-aid. We still need a few all day soakers to help things out.
 
County sized 30+ inch lollipop somewhere in eastern PA on almost all models, but they vary on exactly where they put it. Generally somewhere around Schuylkill, Carbon, Luzerne, Columbia, etc. The bullseye is somewhere in that region.

But again, there's just a huge area with, say, 15-25". And with the winds and fluffy snows I'm not sure there's a difference between 15 and 25". Just gets blown everywhere. Bare ground and 10 foot drifts.
 
wildtrout2 wrote:
It will help, some. Ten inches of snow is the equivalent to one inch of rain, or so they say. So, this storm is really just a band-aid. We still need a few all day soakers to help things out.
Click to expand...

Yep, probably need on the order of 3 or 4 more events with this level of precip between now and mid May to get things back to "normal," for the SC and SE anyway. Whether that be rain or snow. Everywhere else in PA is in halfway decent shape and just needs more normal maintenance levels of precip.

Ideally, some spacing in between them would be nice, and not a quick warm-up with a southern flow rain channel following this snow. That on top of the melt would lead to a higher run-off rate, and maybe even flooding.

In a perfect world...Let it snow all it wants this week. Keep things cool, but not cold, for about the next two weeks afterward to facilitate a controlled melt. Then a 2", 24+ hour rain event every 10 days or so for the next 6 weeks after that til the more typical Summer T-storm pattern sets in. That's a lot to ask...probably not gonna happen! Although longer range models do show good chances of decent precip in April. Temps by then should dictate it comes in the form of rain.
 
Ratios vary. In most of PA It will be between 10 and 15 to 1. Liquid precipitation on the order of 2" in SE PA (with lower ratios) and 1-1.5" in the Poconos (with higher ratios).
 
So you think it's spring, read this, and the forecast is calling for a storm rivaling this storm from 1958. I call it the birthday storm, it happened on my 9th birthday.

http://philadelphiaweather.blogspot.com/2008/03/march-1958-snowstorm.html
 
Wind is being overhyped on this storm in PA. Will be very bad at the Jersey Shore but not much away from the coast. Upper level low to the west prevents strong pressure gradient from setting up on back side of the monster coastal low.

Looks like everywhere east of the spine of the Apps is in store for 10"+.
 
I take that back as Blizzard warnings just went up for Eastern PA. In case anyone was getting their weather info from armchair forecasters on a fishing website...don't, listen to the pros.
 
SREF plumes

Reading. Mean 15". Only 4 of 27 members below 10". 6 members over 20" with a max of 25".

East Allentown. Mean 17". Well clustered in high teens. 3 members below 10". 5 members over 20".

Wilkes Barre. Mean 22". 1 member below 10". 5 members over 30". Jackpot?

Philly. Mean 7". Many members below 5". 3 members over 15".

State College. Mean 15". 4 members below 10". Most between 10 and 25. One crazy member showing 40".

Harrisburg. Mean 17". Pretty evenly distributed between 6" and 29".

 
I'm just glad I don't live in DE County and own a house in Chester Co. like last year. That big snow made me shovel out over 100 yd just to get my truck out. Then I drove to the place I had bought near Coatesville and my daughter and I shoveled around 30" so I could have the pleasure of unlimited patching and painting. Thankfully my new drive is much shorter and I have my plow ready on the garden tractor. We are still drought stricken in the Southeast so the run off should help the water table some. Maybe we'll even get a meaningful rain before the official opening....
 
Interesting thing is that in 1958 the climate conditions were very close to what they are for this storm, history repeats itself. El Nino years 58 and 17. close to same conditions in the Pacific Ocean, and the storm is setting up the same way, High P to the NE and low off the coast, with a low in mid-west transferring it's energy to the low off the coast.
Falling trees and power lines all over the place in 58 and I live in the city. Out of school for a week.
Heavy wet snow has a lot more moisture in it than dry snow. I'm betting the water content is around 3 inches of snow equal to 1 inch water.
Wind gust to 60 MPH.
 
Lots of hype.
We'll see tomorrow if the snow blower will come out.
My bet is it will stay in the shed for anther year.
 
Chaz, this is not an El Nino year. That was last winter. We are in a mild La Nina. Also, other than the aspects shared by most nor'easters (coastal low with HP blocking), this is not a similar setup. 58 is not in the top 20 analogs. The top 2 analogs, if wondering, are 2007 Valentine's day storm and the 1993 "storm of the century". And while yes, a midwest storm transfers to coast (Miller B), this is more a hybrid A/B as 2 jets already phased in the GOM. This is a triple phaser, like 93, but ramps up a little later as the northern stream doesn't join till it's already in the Atlantic.

CRB, I'm skeptical that Erie gets much. Not really supposed to from the main storm. After it passes, when the rest of us are cleaning up, you'll have some wraparound north winds, which it's showing cranking up the lake effect machine a bit in the typical stripe parallel to the lake.
 
was looking for a storm hype thread...got my fingers crossed that sepa gets pummeled... many of the bass ponds I fished/scouted in area in the last bit of warm weather are still holding pretty low from their avg. spring time levels.
 
I think right along I95, including D.C., Baltimore, Philly, NYC, and Boston all underperform, and that'll result in lots of bust calls. Too much mixing. Could be lots of ice in places though. They are being pretty honest about the uncertainty there but people only pay attention to the "high" end of the potential the mets have reported, not the low end. It's coming in on the west end of predictions.

But not far NW of I95 does just fine. I think Lehigh Valley gets smashed.

In terms of streams, though, not as much snow just means more rain and ice. Large amounts of liquid will still fall.

Also think it'll underperform in western PA. This is gonna be a Pocono and Amish country special, IMO.
 
Penn State University has announced that they will be CLOSED tomorrow.

That doesn't happen very often. They must be expecting a serious storm.
 
PSU had a delayed start due to snow, and cancelled classes at noon time due to a hurricane, while I was there.

They're starting to cancel classes more often.
 
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