Vacationing Cold

Say farewell to the colder than normal temperatures.  At least for a little while.  The cold air takes a retreat north until at least next Tuesday.  The next shot of really cold air shows up the weekend of the 8th and is followed by the coldest temps of the season the following weekend.  Obviously that is quite far from now but just telling you what the models show.  Looking ahead that far can also pinpoint dates to maybe watch for if the ingredients come together.

NAO is still strongly negative around the 9th, the same period where it shows a shot of cold air coming down from the north.  The next seven days show very little precip in the area other than what looks like a cold front Wednesday night.  However, the weekend of the 8th does show a system moving through that would look to have rain with snow on the backside.  There is also something on the 12th and the 14th, the latter showing a formation of a low out to sea the same time temps really drop.

What does this mean?  Nothing.  In the short term enjoy the warmup.  In the back of your mind keep those other dates in mind down the road.

SNOW


I was going to find a map of the Delaware/Lehigh Valley and do a fancy snow total map for all the places that reported totals from this last storm.  Instead I noticed the weather service, who gets paid to do this, did a map of there own that I will share and give my two cents.

I draw one conclusion from looking at this map.  I believe there is no actual method to accurately measure snow in an event like this.  I'm not going to disagree with anything but if you look at specifically Montgomery Country they have two locations reporting less than an inch surrounded by four places that reported more than three inches.  In Berks, Kutztown reported 3.2 inches while an unknown location very close by was under an inch.  The "official" totals are to the right.


RUN UPDATE

Coincidentally this year my birthday happened to fall on the same day as the Lights in the Parkway middle of the week run.  What better way to celebrate than a run where your from.

For my liking this was just about perfect.  I forgot to check the temperature at the start, but I'd guess around 34 with a light breeze.  The night before I loaded an app for running onto my phone for the first time to see what it would calculate.  I never take my phone running but felt this was a simple enough run that I could hold it without having any problems.  I must admit I hardly noticed the lights and decorations.  It was dark enough with some patches of ice that I focused either on the path or out ahead trying to catch people who started in front of me.  Regardless, it was a nice little experience and another local run to cross off the list.

Here is what my phone recorded.  Will go off the page a little. 

Official time was 22:32 so pretty accurate in that respect.  Green marker was the start and red marker the finish.