Let's Hear It For The Band

It's always funny to see how a matter of a few miles can make quite a difference.  I woke up this morning to see a very light coating of snow on the ground.  It was just enough to make me smile and think, sweet!  Little did I know that it was actually still lightly snowing.  By the time I left for work it was snowing fairly heavily.  It didn't stop for the rest of the day.

There was never a doubt this was a storm with a lot of energy.  If I could take a moving picture of the water vapor it would have resembled a huge inland hurricane.  It had the exact same counter clockwise rotation which has caused this very consistent snow today (in some areas). 

I went and found the image anyway and even though you can't see the movement of the storm I drew arrows.  This is current at 8:45 and the storm is into the third day while still producing snow.

Oddly enough, the Lehigh Valley had no winter weather advisory today.  Tuesday morning we did have one.  I even had the picture posted on Monday night.  I wasn't convinced that it was necessary though there is no way for me to know since any frozen precip that fell would have happened in the middle of the night.  The National Weather Service called for potential accumulating snowfall today.  No advisory.  It was probably needed.  These are the joys of weather.

There is no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen at an exact time in a precise location.  If you really want to get detailed accurate information get yourself a weather station.  At least then you will be able to know what happened after the fact.  At some point today a band of snow went swinging through in a similar fashion as the arrows above show the clouds moving.  The swing slowed down at a point centering itself around the Lehigh/Berks line.  When it looked like it would peter out another small band of snow set up in the afternoon.  It left enough for plows to come out and snow blowers to crank.  Bizarre.

I can tell you how centralized this was.  When I left work there was probably around two inches of snow on the car.  The grass and everything was covered easily.  Plows had come through the parking lot.  When I arrived home there was virtually nothing.  That's right.  Practically bupkis.  It's basically a 12 mile drive.  What's also amusing is as much as I follow news during work there was almost nothing coming in about the snow.  Nothing from the Allentown news or Philadelphia.  No joke the only thing I saw mentioned was from the Reading Eagle that said Fleetwood-Blandon road was very icy and use caution.  It was like it only was snowing in a 5 mile circle.  Here's some more for you.  Of all the snow reports for today that came in, the lowest total in Berks was equal to the highest total anywhere else in the Mt Holly region.

My original intent tonight was to give a wrap up of this snow.  Instead the wrap around snow continues.  In fact the main batch of snow is now centered squarely in Pennsylvania.  As I checked the radar I noticed the snow filtering back in from the northeast.  This time it is further south.  While the snow is trying to push back close to the areas that already saw a decent amount, it has been snowing here for an hour and everything is white.  If the band sticks together another inch is possible  Head to Emmaus and they will once again see nothing tonight.

Since I did actually make one prediction, which looking back was probably a good thing since the snow is all over the place, I will eventually get around to figuring out what the official total for Allentown was after this wraps up some time early tomorrow morning.  Can't wait for winter to actually begin.