How Cold Is Cold?

We’ve now had our first true Arctic blast of the season, with the passage of a cold front yesterday evening. Temps dropped down into the single digits overnight, sinking all the way to 5ºF at the airport, making it the coldest weather State College has seen since December 2005, when it dropped below zero on a couple occasions (not coincidentally that was the last time it’s truly felt or looked like winter around here). By the time I made it outside to start my walk into Walker, it had warmed all the way up to 10º, but the windchill was down around -10º, so it was a bit brisk out. But just how cold is it? If you ask someone like Daniel he’ll say it’s “cold as hell,” whereas Chris would say that it’s finally cold enough to put on long pants instead of shorts, and everyone else has their own opinion as well. So, in an attempt to settle the debate, here’s my somewhat arbitrary scale of coldness:
30º to 40º : Crisp (autumn); Balmy (spring)
20º to 30º : Cool
10º to 20º : Chilly
0º to 10º : Cold
-10º to 0º : Very Cold
-20º to -10º : Damn Cold/Frigid
-20º and below: Bitterly Cold
-60º : “Embarrass”-ingly Cold (a little 1994 Minnesota humor there)
Feel free to leave a comment with your own scale of coldness, I’d be interested in seeing them.
The State College NWS office is embarrassing. On Wednesday during the day they were forecasting a total of up to an inch of snowfall for Thursday, as a result of the front coming through and some leftover lake effect squalls making it over the Allegheny Plateau and the Laurels. We all agreed with that forecast. On Wednesday evening they suddenly upped their forecast to 1-3 inches of snow for Thursday and another 1-3 inches for Thursday night (honk honk!). We were all scratching our heads at that one, because nothing we could see was indicating that we’d get more than an inch, or maybe two if we got really, really lucky. So then yesterday morning they came to their senses and re-did their forecast to indicate less than one inch of total accumulation, yet they left the phrase “heavy snow” in the forecast. Huh? Since when does “heavy snow” belong in the same sentence as “less than one inch accumulation”? Anyway, we got a couple of nice little snow squalls late afternoon to make the ground white (Jeff, observing a nice 35 dBZ snow squall on the radar a bit west of here just before then, said, “Man, I wish I were in Tyrone right now. [pause] I never thought I would ever utter those words.”). Then the front came through around 6 or 7pm with a few more flurries, but then absolutely nothing was showing up on radar behind it (the lake effect machine turned out to be particularly wimpy). Sometime shortly after this the State College NWS changed their forecast from “40% chance of light snow” to “100% chance of heavy snow, mostly before midnight, with overnight accumulations of 1-3 inches.” What?!? How can you change your forecast to that when your best chance of precip is already well past you, and there’s literally nothing showing up on radar?? I don’t know what they’re smoking up there, but as Walter said, “I need me some of that.” The thing is, even their own forecast discussion said that they were starting to lower PoPs [probability of precipitation] in central and eastern PA, but that was certainly not reflected in their increase from 40% to 100% in State College. And that’s not even mentioning their forecasted overnight low of 12º when the current temp at that point was 9º (remember that it dropped to 5º last night). Their routinely busted forecasts at least provide us with a fairly regular source of amusement here in the department though.
Okay, I’m done ranting now. I should get back to work anyway, as my model just finished running. Stay cool!