Snow forecast for Philly is a dud. Here’s what didn’t happen.
The upper air was warmer than expected, the changeover came too late, and the snow forecast was a bust.
Thursday’s snowfall wasn’t expected to amount to much. As it turned out, it has amounted to even less.
Up to 2 inches was in the forecast, but by late morning, at most up to a milky layer of white was covering the grasses, and the roads were wet. So much for the National Weather Service’s winter-weather advisory.
“That’s coming down,” said Dean Iovino, a lead meteorologist at the weather service office in Mount Holly. “Everything didn’t quite line up.”
The temperatures in the upper air were a tad higher than expected, delaying the changeover, and “the precipitation outraced the cold air,” he said.
Rain had been expected to yield to snow around daybreak, but that didn’t occur until midmorning in Philadelphia and areas to the east.
This would have been the fourth snowfall of the month, and none have been terribly disruptive. Nature pitched a snow shutout in December, and those first three January snows had all the staying power of the average party decorations. Plus, the timing for each event was relatively benign.
Here was the erstwhile snow forecast for Thursday:
And the reality:
The rain and snow were riding a rather potent cold front that would have a tad more juice than the average front, forecasters said.
“This is probably going to be the coldest stretch of the winter,” said John Feerick, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc.
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Temperatures aren’t expected to escape the 20s until Sunday.
The forecast calls for a chance of snow Tuesday night and Wednesday. These outlooks due to tend to change, sometimes at the last minute.