This crap about Friday.
So it's going to snow.
The vernal equinox at 6:45pm on Friday 3/20. At that moment, spring begins. And at that moment, it will be wet snowing / raining and it will be 34 degrees. It is a cruel, prickish joke that Mother Nature is pulling.
Snow begins about 6 or 7am Friday, spreading into the area from the southwest. Snow continues on and off until 3 or 4pm, when it mixes with rain. Precipitation changes back to snow before ending round about midnight.
Accumulation: an inch or two, mostly slush on the roads; the bulk of the accumulation will be on the grass and whatnot. The onset before dawn (when paved surfaces are at their coldest) could impact the morning commute. The sun angle and surface temperature will generally prevent travel issues in the afternoon and evening. We may see some slippery spots reemerge during the late evening.
A side note: it is kind of, really, awfully depressing to be talking about snow on March 18th. *sigh*
Chance of delay Friday, 19%
Chance of cancellation Friday, 9%
Chance of early dismissal Friday, 37%
Saturday will start cold (32 degrees at dawn), but temperatures will rise rapidly: 40 by noon, 50 by 6pm. So any snow that accumulates Friday will melt Saturday.
And then Sunday is windy and cold again, much like today (Wednesday 3/18).
Here's something, though. Friday is Ovid's 2058th birthday. (He died 1998 years ago, though.) He wrote the Metamorphoses, which is a super-long poem that chronicles historical stuff and is known to have inspired Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Stephenie Meyer. In that work, he said, "Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you." So that is profound.
Ovid, pensive.
Stay tuned for updates!
The vicissitudes of mid-March...
Hey there - just a brief forecast about the coming week. Some of you have been hearing about the potential for wintry precipitation on Friday, so here's the straight dope.
Note: the origin of this phrase comes from betting on the ponies. When stimulants had been given to racehorses (that is, they had been doped), gamblers wanted to know about it. The term "straight dope" started as a phrase describing what had been given to those poor animals, then came to mean the (very salient) information itself.
But, as always, I digress.
David Hasselhoff has been cast in Sharknado 3, due out (on Syfy) this summer. It's apparently set in Washington, D.C. and features Mark Cuban (the outspoken billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner) as the President and Ann Coulter (the hatemongering right-wing pundit/columnist/she-devil) as the Vice President. Whatever. Hasselhoff!!!
Tuesday 3/17 begins with a few showers and overcast skies, reaching a high in the mid to upper 50s by early afternoon. Then temperatures fall, winds kick up, and we get a few degrees below freezing by early Wednesday morning.
Wednesday looks windy and colder with highs only in the upper 30s.
Thursday is partly sunny and a bit milder with highs in the mid 40s.
Precipitation moves in late Thursday night into Friday. Surface temperatures will be above freezing, but cold air in the upper atmosphere could bring us some wintry precipitation. Right now I'd say we get mainly rain with a bit of wet snow (melting on surfaces) mixed in. We'd really need snow to fall heavily to accumulate at this time of year, and this won't be heavy. I think it's no big deal.
Chance of delay Friday, 17%
Chance of cancellation Friday, 3.75%
Saturday gets milder (high in the low 50s) but is breezy and overcast generally. A few rain showers are possible overnight into Sunday.
Colder, then: highs in the 40s and lows around freezing on Sunday and Monday. And Tuesday.
Stay tuned for updates!
A very little bit of freezing rain possible in the AM...
So the National Weather Service has put out an advisory or whatever, and I thought I should comment on it.
That is what could happen:
Overnight temps get below freezing, and light freezing rain showers between 2 and 6am would create an icy glaze on roads and sidewalks. And people would be like, "Do de do, spring has sprung, I'm not fully awake, but here I go to work--shit, I'm down." And they would fall on their asses.
Or toodling along to work in the drizzle and like, "Ah, balls, case of the Mondays, blah--shit, ice." And then your car skids.
Happy 44th birthday on Monday to Emmanuel Lewis, who played the title character in the 80s sitcom Webster, which was a truly terrible show that I nonetheless have inexplicable nostalgia for.The thing is, though, I don't think any of this is going to happen.
Chance of delay Monday, 22%
Chance of cancellation Monday, 0.0075%
And then Monday ends up near 50 with partly sunny skies.
Overcast with a little rain on Tuesday. High again near 50.
Wednesday and Thursday look mostly sunny with highs at (or just above) 50.
Rainy Friday, but no frozen precipitation.
We may even see the sixties next week (the 16th to the 20th)! And then we can all say it's too warm, where is spring, and crap.
Stay tuned for updates!
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!
End of the storm; delay tomorrow?
Snow should begin to taper off by 1 or 2pm, ending completely by 3 or 4pm.
We have six inches of accumulation; I have heard of 7+ in the Exton area and some parts of Montgomery County. Please send snow measurements, observed travel conditions, and outage information to me via email or via my Facebook page.
It gets really, really cold - especially for March - overnight. I think most places get down to 4, and wind chills will be below zero until about 10-11am Friday.
Chance of delay Friday, 73%
Chance of cancellation Friday, 28%
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!