As Philly gets a taste of winter, the snow drought has set a record and shows no signs of ending

With biting gusts up to to 30 mph, wind chills will be in the 20s Tuesday and may drop into the teens Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, forecasters say, and temperatures won’t get past 40 until Thursday.

As it’s beginning to feel a lot like midwinter, can snow be far behind? A snow shower rippled through parts of the region Tuesday morning and another one could pop up in the afternoon. Otherwise, however, this cold snap will be brief, and meteorologists are confident that for the foreseeable future the populace will be spared any significant impacts from what has become a quite-infrequent visitor around here.

As of Tuesday, it has been 668 days since even an inch of snow was measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport. That surpasses the 661-day streak that ended on Dec. 15, 1973, after the city’s only snowless winter in records dating to 1884.

“It certainly has been a stretch,” said Cameron Wunderlin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly.

» READ MORE: Winter outlooks suggest the wait for snow will continue for some time.

With a grand total of 0.3 inches of snow, the winter or 2022-23 finished second in Philly’s all-time snow-deprivation derby.

For PennDot’s Philadelphia region, which includes the city and its neighboring counties, a mere 10,385 tons of salt was spread on state roads, a record low. The 10-year average is just under 90,000 tons, according to its annual winter report.

The city hasn’t had more than an inch of snow since Jan. 28-29, 2022, when 6.5 inches accumulated.

It likely has something to do with the tropical Pacific, said Bob Larson, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. Conditions out that way are radically different these days, but for three consecutive winters, sea-surface temperatures were below normal over vast expanses of the ocean, the state known as La Niña.

» READ MORE: During Philly winters, expect anything

Snowfall totals have varied considerably during La Niña; however, the winters often are characterized by persistence. What happens, keeps happening in North America as the consistent cooling of the overlying air drives the west-to-east upper-level winds that deliver our weather.

February, on average Philly’s snowiest month, and March were quite dry last winter, Larson noted.

The weather service’s Wunderlin said the lack of snow has been related to the general absence of cold high pressure, or heavier air, to the north of the region that typically provide the chilly temperatures required for snow from coastal storms.

Larson noted that extremely cold air was absent almost the entire winter, save for a stretch around Christmas. Overall, it was the fifth-warmest winter on record in Philly.

He subscribes to what he calls the “traffic light” theory to explain what’s not been happening snow-wise. “It’s almost like the cold air from the north has the red light when the storms come along,” he said. “When the cold air finally gets the green light, the storms have the red light.”

About the only way to get snow around here, he says is for the lights to malfunction, and they’ve been working just fine lately.

Contrary to those of the last three winters, as of Monday, the sea-surface temperatures over vast expanses of the tropical Pacific were on fire, averaging close to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above long-term normals with the ocean in a state of an El Niño warming due to persist into spring.

As La Niña, El Niño winters tend to be characterized by persistence, and long-range forecasters expect an active coastal storm track to develop as winter progresses.

That suggests a high probability of virtual scares and supermarket panics, but not necessarily snow.

During El Niño, the jet stream winds that ferry snow and cold across North American usually are split into two branches. The southern branch is the storm-mover; the northern, the cold bearer. For major snowstorms in the East, the branches have to meet, or “phase” somewhere along the coast, says Larson.

And if snow does come, the outlooks posted by the major services say it’s likely to take its time.

AccuWeather is calling for a tepid start in December, followed by a colder January, with February perhaps offering the best shot of snow, said Larson.

In the short term, the region is in for two very cold days, but a significant warm-up is due Thursday, and the cold-air red light will be in operation before the next storm threat come Friday.