Snow, not even a whole inch, is expected Saturday morning in Philly
Snow isn't a certainty, but winds are. Gusts to 45 mph are expected Thursday.
Two days after a U.S. computer model was seeing 2 feet or more of snow in Philly during the weekend, on Wednesday that estimate was down to about an inch or less.
Rather than an encore of the record blizzard of Jan. 7 and 8, 1996, the latest forecasts were calling for a few hours of snow with light — as in very light — accumulations, with perhaps a little more at the Shore.
For what is now shaping up to be a relatively harmless snowfall, the earlier forecasts for Saturday created quite a hubbub, including a plea from the National Weather Service to please stop asking how much for Philly?
Six-and-a-half feet of snow for Philly?
This was not the first time this winter that the U.S. Global Forecast System, whose models are run every six hours, appeared to indulge in the hallucinatory.
At one point, it had far overestimated amounts for Monday’s snow.
Tony Gigi, a longtime meteorologist at the weather service’s Mount Holly office who is now retired, calculated that separate GFS runs had forecast a total of 77 inches of snow for the Philly region from Dec. 20 through Sunday. Philly’s official seasonal total stands at 2.1 inches, but we still have a few days to go.
It was unclear whether the machine would be checked for controlled substances.
“I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with it,” said weather service meteorologist Eric Hoeflich.
Meteorologists agree that the European model outperformed the GFS for Monday’s event and had consistently downplayed the potential of whatever is coming this weekend.
The Philly outlook for the rest of the week
The snow possibility aside, it appears that the region will be getting a break from the gusty winds starting Friday afternoon and continuing through Saturday morning.
Before then, however, gusts to 35 mph are expected to persist Wednesday afternoon with temperatures remaining below freezing.
Highs will be in the 30s on Thursday, but with 45-mph gusts expected. Daytime temperatures are forecast to top out in the 30s Friday and again on Saturday and Sunday, when the gusts are due to return.
The weather in South Philly evidently won’t be much of a factor Sunday when the Eagles host the Green Bay Packers in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.
No precipitation is expected, and any snow that falls early Saturday should be easy to clear. Temperatures during the game are forecast to be around freezing or a little below, with light winds as the daytime gusts back off after sunset, which will be about 20 minutes after kickoff. In fact, the temperatures and winds here Sunday evening won’t be much different from the conditions in Green Bay (although it might be snowing there).
If the Los Angeles Rams or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were coming to town it might be a different story, but in this instance, the Eagles won’t have a “weather advantage,” Hoeflich said.
The Packers do have some experience playing in the cold.