December 2, 2005
A busy weather pattern is upon us as noted by the flurries and strong, icy winds that affected the region during the day on Friday. Cold and active will be the key words as we head through the foreseeable future (7 days) with no less than THREE chances for wintry weather in the next 6 days!
A low pressure system will move closer to the area during the day on Saturday as will be detected by the lowering clouds during the late morning and afternoon. Temperatures will be in the upper 30s for highs. Light snow will overspread the region by 9PM on Saturday and will mix with and change to rain by morning in areas South and East of a West Chester, Pottstown, Trenton line. Things may start out as snow down at the shore, but will quickly turn to plain rain. The snow/mix/rain line will move from South to North during the early morning hours on Sunday. Areas closest to the city will see up to a slushy inch accumulation of snow, especially North and West of the r/s line mentioned above. In and around the city will be plain rain by morning on Sunday. NWS may issue a Winter Weather Advisory for the area during the day on Saturday if needed for hazardous travel conditions and minor accumulations of snow. Things clear out for a bit on Sunday but not for too long.
Another storm system will be developing along the boundary left behind from our first storm. This time it looks to emerge from the Gulf of Mexico and carry with it a little more moisture. Meanwhile, the "little storm that could" which passed through Saturday night, will also help filter in some colder air at all levels of the atmosphere. Light snow and snow showers should break out by dark and could become moderate to heavy for a few hours Monday night (during the Eagles Monday Night Football game??) depending on the exact track of the storm. For the past several runs of guidance, temperatures haven't been a problem, but some models (12Z EC/12Z NAM) are suggesting that a piece of the lobe from a cold mass over the Upper Great Plains will slow down and wait until later in the week to develop another storm, thus pushing the Monday system out to sea. Light snow and snow showers will affect our area Monday night with the chance for decent (4-8"?) snowfall totals still possible, though that would be considered high-end for this type of rapidly moving system. Key word with the Monday system is "quick". It wont be a storm to stall and bomb out at our coastline. More details on the early week system to follow.
Now that finally leads us up to potential system #3 to possibly strike the East Coast later on in the week: Another piece of energy will be crashing into the West and through the Rockies into the Plains early in the week. Coupled with the fact the another piece of the Polar Vortex lobe may try to drop Southward from Saskatchewan, and there is the potential for quite a large storm to be brewing on the horizon down along the Gulf Coast. Obviously at this time it is merely conjecture, but there are strong signals already on guidance showing a pattern-changing 'event' to hit the Southern and Eastern portion of the coutry late in the week. More on that later as we need to see how these first two systems affect the pattern. I've heard some folks refer to the current weather oscillation pattern as fairly close to what we saw in December of 1995 (which by the way smashed Philadelphia's all-time snow records for any year and the winter also yielded the "Blizzard of '96" with over 30 inches of snow recorded in Philadelphia from that storm). That is not to say we will have a season like the one that year, but there were a few 'decent' snowfalls in the month of December '95 and this current pattern is prjoected to be fairly similair for most of the month.
So in short, a mix of wintry weather Saturday night and Sunday morning changing to rain from just West of the city points South and East. Up to an inch of slushy snow is possible. Another system tries to move Northward out of the Gulf of Mexico Monday and will give our area some light snowfall. This sytem has the potential to give us accumulating snowfall, but right now the odds are not in favor of that happening. Another system waits for later in the week to possible affect the East Coast. More later.
S.B.
