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The Story Behind the Weather - By Forecaster John Ensworth M.S. - 

The Discussion of Weather Events Daily for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

 Last updated: 02/12/2004 08:22 PM
 

Good Afternoon Philadelphia!   

    I'm glad to announce that these discussions will continue until at least the end of February (it's a short month)! 
    I have the necessary server space (especially with missed days!).  

In short: Very quiet and not too cold weather will remain the rule through the beginning of the weekend.  Then a dry but vaguely familiar slam of cold air returns.

In the Long: I'll keep the discussion short tonight to save some disk space and because the weather has turned so un-eventful. (And one of my main sources for maps, UCAR, is down tonight). 

The warm temperatures recently (and rain events) have battered back the snow cover to the northern and western parts of the state. 

With 8pm temperatures just a bit above freezing still.  The cold stuff is way out west and far north. 

The surface map shows a weak low drifting past us to the north and another High in the great plains expanding eastward. Its leading edge is the cold front down in the Gulf of Mexico and off the SW Atlantic coast. 

We don't have upper air maps tonight, but from the expected minimum temperature map, you can see the broad trough (purples and blues) over the central and western US). This cold air is associated with the surface High pressure system seen above. 

Air spreading out from that high is already making west winds (not too cold yet) blow over the region (too much air in one location spreads out to where lower pressure is - pretty simple idea... no?). 

The  next minor weather event will be at the leading edge of the late weekend cold snap that is still expected to hit.  As a fairly dry but quite cold front slips out of Canada, we'll see snow begin to pick up in Philadelphia by 7pm Saturday.

The snow will pick up a bit more by 10pm Saturday...

And begin to end after 1am Sunday. 

Then the cold air moves in for Sunday hitting it's lowest Monday morning with lows near 10F in Philadelphia (and many negative numbers in New York State). 

Tuesday morning, we jump warmer about 10F and the cold air is already pulling out to the east. Woo hoo!

I'll take a quiet weather pattern now and then... it must get exciting someday!

I'll see you here again Friday.

Meteorologist  John Ensworth

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