In an austere Point Breeze building that houses county police headquarters and other county services, about 50 people from several city and county departments braced on Tuesday for the oncoming storm in what's been dubbed "The Situation Room," a clean, dim space on the second floor with rows of desks and flat-screen computers.

Around the room, a half-dozen televisions flickered with local news broadcasts and television shows. In the front of the room, a projector showed enlarged footage of state Department of Transportation road cameras from around the region.

This is the nerve center for the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County's storm response. The ad-hoc group came together Friday night to handle virtually every aspect of the storm imaginable, from divvying up snow removal contracts to private companies to dispatching National Guard troops to helping get snow-trapped residents to the grocery store.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning in effect until 7 p.m. tonight. Forecasters predicted 2 to 3 inches of snow Tuesday night, with another 2 to 5 inches falling before morning.

"There will be less snow with this storm, but the winds will become more of a factor," said Andy Mussoline, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com in State College. "We'll see winds strong out of the west-northwest averaging 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. So blowing and drifting will certainly be a concern, with winds pushing snow back onto cleared streets."

The snow is expected to taper off this afternoon, but flurries are likely to continue into Thursday.

Tuesday night, The Situation Room was relatively quiet, especially compared to the chaos that ensued following the first storm. Staff bustled around the room, while others huddled around computers. Allegheny County Chief of Emergency Services Robert Full talked with National Guard troops.

In one corner, procurement staff from the city Finance Department took calls from private contractors helping with storm response. At a group of tables near the front of the room, there were employees fielding 311 calls. National Guard troops occupied another cluster of computers. The Red Cross, clad in embroidered fleece jackets, took over tables at the center of the room.

The Situation Room has been activated for a number of events, from the mid-June rainstorms that brought flooding across the region, to the September G-20 summit to the Steelers Super Bowl victory in 2009, which brought rioting in Oakland and other neighborhoods.

The goal is to facilitate faster communication between departments, city spokeswoman Joanna Doven said. For example, once the city's finance department got a list of tree-removal contractors to handle fallen branches, they simply walked across the room to have it inspected by the city's department of public works staff.

Just on the other side of the wall, dispatchers and 911 call takers sat in a vast room, at row upon row of computers. They were staffed at twice their normal levels, with about 63 people processing calls from across the county as opposed to 45.

The extra staff were called in to help handle "non-traditional" calls -- from residents who had lost power or heat, or who needed a prescription to be picked up. Motorists called in to say they were stuck in the snow.

Shift commander Hank Caparelli said the goal was to transfer as many of these low-grade storm-related calls to the other side of the wall, back to The Situation Room, where they could be connected with the appropriate city or county department and, in some cases, with the National Guard, so that the dispatchers could handle true emergencies.

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