Forget the groundhog; human forecasters are seeing a wintry couple of weeks for the Philly region

Perhaps only a groundhog could make sense out of a winter in which the Jersey Shore has received more snow than Portland, Maine; Manchester, N.H.; or Burlington, Vt. Not to mention more than Albany, N.Y., and Scranton — combined.

The humans have struggled with it, and Punxsutawney Phil notwithstanding, they are confident only that the Philadelphia region and the Northeast are in for an adventurous two weeks at the very least, with an icing threat on the table around here for Friday into Friday night.

Not surprising, most atmospheric scientists don’t particularly care about Punxsutawney Phil and still prefer computer models, upper-air analysis, and multisyllabic phenomena to shadow interpretation.

» READ MORE: In Philly winters, expect anything

“We do believe we could see more significant periods of winter ahead for the East over the next two to four more weeks,” said Matt Rogers, meteorologist with Commodity Weather Group, which services energy and agricultural concerns.

Make that three weeks, said Paul Pastelok, a long-range forecaster at AccuWeather Inc.

“There’s still more cold coming,” he said. Some computer guidance suggests a coastal storm threat for next week, but Pastelok said he would place his bet on a significant storm around Valentine’s Day, followed by another cold outbreak.

While the government’s Climate Prediction Center is bullish on above-normal temperatures for the month of February in the Philadelphia region, it has temperatures near to below-normal in the Feb. 10-16 period. What’s been up?

All the preseason outlooks mentioned the La Niña cooling of sea-surface waters over a vast expanse of the tropical Pacific. Typically that has powerful effects on the North American winter, nudging the jet-stream boundaries between warm and cold air northward, and discouraging coastal snowstorms, although some big snows have occurred in La Niña winters.

However, La Niña might have been upstaged by a vast pool of warmer-than-normal water between Hawaii and Alaska, a “marine heatwave,” said Pastelok.

» READ MORE: Philly winter forecasts call for early snow, a cold December, and a 100% chance of uncertainty

“The water got insanely warm,” he said. That has helped to pump rides of higher pressure or heavier air over the Gulf of Alaska, which in turn, has distorted the west-to-east jet stream winds that ferry weather systems across North America, he said.

That pattern, he said, “has been dictating our weather since after Christmas.”

It has even trumped the patterns over the North Atlantic, which usually govern our winter and which this year overall have been unfriendly to East Coast snow. But temperatures off the Mid-Atlantic have been above normal, and that likely has contributed to the intensity of coastal storms, he added.

Last month Atlantic City’s 33.2 inches of snow set a January record, and it experienced its first verified blizzard since 2010.

» READ MORE: ‘We haven’t seen anything like this in years.’ A ‘bomb’ and a blizzard rock Philly and the Shore

Pastelok is confident the pattern will break by the end of the month into early March, with potentially dramatic effects.

Temperatures then could make runs into the 60s. “We could get rid of this snow and ice pretty quickly,” he said. But, yes, he said, rising worldwide temperatures and climate change are making this business harder.

AccuWeather had called for a fast start to winter with December chill. December 2021 ended up as the second-warmest on record in Philly. The 6abc outlook predicted that the Shore would get only 12 to 18 inches for the season and a low risk of “blockbuster storms.”

The long-term outlooks aside, the forecasts for the rest of this week and early next week are looking quite unsettled.

Temperatures shot into the mid-40s Wednesday in advance of a long-duration system expected to pester much of the eastern third of the nation with an assortment of snow, rain, and ice.

Around here, rain is likely Thursday night, however temperatures are going to tumble Friday and the rain could turn to ice in sleet during the afternoon and continue into the night.

“Ice accumulations may result in disruptions to travel on Friday,” the National Weather Service in Mount Holly said Wednesday.

Pastelok said it’s also possible that a coastal storm could develop on Monday, and that would likely produce snow if it happened.

Pastelok is among those who don’t pay much attention to what the groundhog decrees on Feb. 2.

But the folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration evidently do.

Last year they posted analysis of all of Phil’s forecasts, starting with the first one in 1887, using the February-March temperatures for the 48 contiguous states for verification.

In most years, Phil has seen his shadow when roused from his burrow at daybreak, portending six more weeks of winter.

» READ MORE: Punxsutawney Phil’s New Jersey counterpart dies right before Groundhog Day

NOAA determined that Phil was right about 50% of the time. In other words, as good as a coin flip.

Maybe they should just let that poor thing sleep.