A Chill In The Air

I'm going to be honest, the last few weeks have been boring.  December ended up being 5 degrees above normal with less than an inch of snow.  It hit 63 on Christmas.  Forgive me for not posting about the lack of winter weather.

Now I'm sitting here at 9:30 with my outdoor temperature reading 9.5.  The snow from Tuesday still clearly visible with no plans of melting anytime soon.  Two cheers for the return of winter.  Now we can go back to the maps.

For the purpose of an update our official total (Allentown) is 7.9 inches for the season.  If it seems like a small number well it sort of is depending on what you consider small.  In historical context for our area it is actually right at average or slightly above for this time of year.  And that will be changing.  Let me remind you that this is the exact same week last year when six straight nights hit single digit lows and three fell below zero.  The high on this day last year was 8.  So let's consider this a warming trend. 

According to the GFS this is what we have coming up (subject to change at any time).

A big old mess on Tuesday.  Stay tuned.  The model never has our area in anything but orange which is the sleet, snow and ice mix.

This one shows a moderate snowfall on Thursday the 15th.

Both the GFS and Euro have snow totals in the 6-10 inch range through the 15th.  The Euro extends to the 22nd and predicts 12-18 inches over the next two weeks.  Once again we have some things to keep our eye on.