The last of the single digits
David Hasselhoff has listed his luxury villa in Calabasas, California, for $2.3 million. It has a "sexy bathroom" and everything. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds Hoff-some.A lot of the snow/ice on the roads melted today in the sunshine, but as temperatures get down to 5 overnight, there will be lots of refreezing, especially on secondary roads, in parking lots that weren't completely cleared, and sidewalks.
Here's the encouraging bit: this is the last time we'll get down to the single digits until next winter.
The high on Saturday gets all the way up to 38; we get up to 42 on Sunday.
40s on Monday and Tuesday. 50s on Wednesday and Thursday.
40s on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The next chance of wintry precipitation I see is mid-March.
Sorry, I meant mid-November.
Stay tuned for updates!
Bit of a lowball, then.
From my last forecast:
Chance of delay Wednesday, 28%
Chance of cancellation Wednesday, 6%
Well, shit.
Happy wrongness, though.
Bit of drizzle and a few (rain) showers throughout the day today. Temps hold steady in the mid to upper 30s and don't begin to fall until 10pm(ish), so road conditions should improve throughout the day.
Snow starts by midnight and continues until about noon Thursday, when it will taper to snow showers and flurries in the early afternoon.
I'm sticking with the call of 4-6 inches generally for Berks. Chester County, Delaware County, Lancaster County, Philly, and points south and east appear to be in the bullseye of this thing: 6-10 inches. The Lehigh Valley, the Poconos, and North Jersey - which have been in the bullseye for many other storms - get only a few inches from this system.
Look at the size of this thing. It covers, like, 20 states. And it's moving right toward us.Temperatures fall from 32 at midnight to 25 at 6am to 20 by noon - and then into the single digits after sunset Thursday. So precipitation type is not going to be a concern with this storm - it's all snow.
Chance of delay Thursday, 94%
Chance of cancellation Thursday, 85%
Friday looks sunny and cold.
Chance of delay Friday, 34%
Chance of cancellation Friday, 11%
Stay tuned for updates!
Winter? Monsoon here. Please stop.
Spoiler alert: the two dots are the same color. It has to do with the color around it or something. Blew yo' minds!!!In honor of the goddamned color-shifting dress that mesmerized my students so maddeningly today, I have included some optical illusions herein. (Seriously, if they brought one-tenth of the ardor and critical thinking to their study of literature that they brought to bear on justifying whether they saw white/gold or blue/black, I would be as happy as a howler monkey with two figs and a wooden nickel.)
Here's what's happening with the weather.
Climatologically, it's getting on toward spring. (Meteorological winter ends on Saturday, and actual winter ends on March 20th.) So the angle of the sun's rays is becoming an issue that we must consider when forecasting.
But here's the thing: winter is not leaving.
For example, tonight it's getting down to 3, with wind chills dipping below zero.
Saturday will be sunny but cold, with a high only getting up to 26. (Normal highs for this time of year are in the mid 40s.) Then it gets down to 4 on Saturday night.
Sunday will be overcast with a high of about 30. Oh, and it's going to snow. Not a whole lot, as the heavier amounts will fall well north of us. Expect scattered snow showers from about 1pm to 6pm Sunday, then a few periods of steadier snow between 6pm and 10pm. The event ends as sleet/ice between 2 and 6am. Maybe a bit of rain early Monday morning, too.
Travel impacts: Sunday night and Monday morning's commute look messy.
Chance of delay Monday, 64%
Chance of cancellation Monday, 11%
Monday gets up to 40, but it'll be pretty windy.
Tuesday into Wednesday brings another chance for wintry weather, but right now that's looking like a wet snow-to-rain event. It's a storm that will be long in duration, but the travel impacts and accumulations will be negligible.
On Wednesday it will get up to 46! All the way to 46. And then colder, but not frigid.
High Thursday will be 40. Friday will be around the same.
The following weekend--Saturday 3/7 and Sunday 3/8--will be gorgeous: sunny with highs in the mid 40s. Yeah!!
That's it, then. I don't see any more of the pipe-bursting, battery-killing, sac-shriveling cold that has plagued us, lo these many weeks.
Stay tuned for updates!
Gloating is poor form.
So I won't.
The big winners for this storm were parts of Delaware and South Jersey with 6-7 inches. We had 3.7 here in Reading, and some heavy bands went through Bucks and Montgomery Counties (where 5-6 inches fell). Philly got 4-5.
Here's what to expect over the next week:
First, be on the lookout for "black ice" this evening as temperatures head down into the teens. Little bit of trivia for you: the term "black ice" was coined by the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, when his horse slipped on an icy patch, pitching Forrest into a briar patch.
None of that is true. (Well, the first sentence about watching for black ice tonight - that's true.) But "black ice" - I think that term came from the fact that it's a thin veneer of ice through which the macadam (usually black) can be seen.
Still, racist.
Wednesday brings us a day of increasing cloudiness with flurries or scattered light snow showers between 2pm and 9pm. A few heavier squalls (not "squaws," a derogatory term for a Native American woman) are possible, especially around 4 or 5. A squall is a period of heavy, blowy snow brought about by the invasion of cold air aloft, which is what's happening here.
Overnight Wednesday into Thursday, temperatures will drop from 20 around 6pm to 10 during the Thursday morning commute. Winds will also increase during that period--though we won't see the high winds we saw on Sunday. Still, wind chills on Thursday morning will dip just below zero.
Thursday will be plenty sunny but COLD as arctic balls of ... crystal ... coldness. I got nothing. High on Thursday will be 12, with wind chills in the negative single digits throughout the day.
Friday will start out so, so cold. Like, absurdly cold. We're-being-punished-for-something cold. During the Friday morning commute, the temperature will be -3 and the wind chill will be in the -25 range. I don't even know what to say anymore. Mercy...? Uncle...?
Friday then turns out to be 12 and sunny and windy and ouch.
Cold on Saturday morning again with a temperature of -1, but far less windy, so there's that.
Saturday turns out less frigid (high of 28) but snow is possible in the afternoon and evening. Not huge accumulations, but nasty in terms of travel hazards.
Snow and rain possible on Sunday, but milder (highs around 40!).
And then colder on Monday and Tuesday here we go again g.d. son of a b.
Oh! Percentages.
Chance of delay Wednesday 2/18, 21%
Chance of cancellation Wednesday 2/18, 10%
Chance of early dismissal Wednesday 2/18, 22%
Chance of delay Thursday 2/19, 16%
Chance of cancellation Thursday 2/19, 7%
Chance of delay Friday 2/20, 77%
Chance of cancellation Friday 2/20, 36%
Stay tuned for updates!
Low temperatures = high snow ratios and decreased salt effectiveness
Let me tell you.
The temperatures, in case you haven't noticed, have been very low. It's 13 now, and it's going down to 10 overnight. Tomorrow's high will only be 22. This is significant for two especial reasons:
1. Low temperatures mean high snow ratios. The snow ratio is the amount of snow produced for every inch of liquid. So essentially it's a comparison between the snowfall amount vs. how much it would be if it fell as rain. A typical snow ratio is 10:1. This means that if 10 inches of snow melted, it would produce 1 inch of liquid. This storm will have snow ratios in the 15:1 or 20:1 range. Here we're looking at very dry, fluffy snow. So even with only, say, a half-inch of liquid, the accumulations will be in the range of 8-10 inches. (This is going to be the case with isolated pockets in Delaware and Maryland, but not for us here in Berks.)
2. Low temperatures also diminish the effectiveness of road salt. Road salt is most effective when the surface temperature is 20-30 degrees. When the surface (the road) gets down to 15 degrees and below, the effectiveness of road salt falls off dramatically. Which means that when it's very cold, the roads will become snow-packed and treacherous more quickly, and the snow that accumulates cannot be cleared as easily. (Salters and plowers, correct me here if I am mistaken.)
Just a little background there to give you some context. Information: it's what Monsoon is all about!™
Expect snow to start around here by about 10 or 11pm, with the heaviest action falling after midnight.
Snow begins to taper by 8 or 9am and will end altogether by 10 or 11am Tuesday. And then skies will clear gradually throughout the day.
MY CALL:
Chance of delay Tuesday, 93%
Chance of cancellation Tuesday, 71%
A publicity still from a 1988 German-made madcap comedy called Starke Zeiten (roughly, Groovy Times) that stars Hasselhoff as an American scientist who tries to dupe a Saudi Arabian dude, and has a monkey wearing human clothes. I have not seen this Zugunglück (train wreck), but I will not rest until I do.Overcast with scattered snow showers on Wednesday morning, possibly resulting in delays (but probably not cancellations).
And then Thursday looks fine. Ass-cold, but fine. High of only 12.
Friday morning will be like a recursion of this morning: the temperature will get down to -4, and the wind chills will approach -20. So a cold-weather delay on Friday looks like again.
The weekend looks nice, though! Shit, wait. Snow possible on Saturday and Sunday, with some sleet mixed in on Saturday night.
Stay tuned for updates!
I forgot to say what accumulations I expected. (Thank you to my favorite lawyer-turned-teacher, Alison Clark, for hipping me to that omission.)
Delaware, Maryland, South Jersey: 6-8 inches
Philadelphia, Chester, Lancaster, Delaware, and Montomgery Counties, as well as NYC: 4-6 inches
Berks: 3-5 inches (Note: this will likely be the cutoff area, so some in Berks may get 2 or 3 inches, but others may get 4 or 5. Unlike in most storms, accumulations will actually be higher in the south.)
Lehigh Valley, Schuylkill County, Poconos, North Jersey: 2-4 inches
The next few days.
No toddlers were harmed in the making of this .gif.I have some forecasting for you people.
First, on Saturday, we have a clipper to contend with - and it's looking a little juicier than I previously thought. It'll be one of those nuisance storms that gives some people a mere coating and some up to 2.3 inches, depending on where heavier banding sets up. Look for scattered light snow showers late morning and early afternoon; then in the late afternoon and early evening, some areas will see heavier squalls. So if you're out and about tomorrow, keep an eye on the radar. And, you know, the actual sky.
Light snow showers and flurries taper by late Saturday night.
This kid was a little sore for a few days and his elbow still hurts when it rains.Following that action, we're going to see temperatures plunge and the winds really, really, really kick up. Really. By early Sunday morning, winds will be 30-35mph (sustained) with gusts of 50mph! That's a lot of wind. Watch for power outages and downed limbs/wires from the wind. And wind chills will be in the negative teens pretty much all day Sunday.
Everyone's fine. Well, that last person in the furry hood, maybe a smidge of lingering headaches and blurry vision.Overnight into Monday's commute, we'll see winds a little bit weaker, but temperatures will dip to -2. Wind chills will be about -20. You think you know cold? Right now (9pm Friday) it's 20 degrees with light wind. So it'll feel about 35 degrees colder than it feels right now. Put that in your pipe, and the horse you rode in on. Something like that.
And it only gets up to 15 degrees on Monday.
Chance of delay Monday, 80%
Chance of cancellation Monday, 38%
Tuesday (actually late Tuesday into Wednesday) still brings a chance of snow, but the latest model guidance suggests that the snow is heading out to sea.
After that, it gets a little bit less prickishly frigid.
Stay tuned for updates!