Let's Dance

The 1.2 inches Saturday means the official total did not get to 10 inches for the month.  Still we are above average.  The heaviest precip was south of the valley where some places hit three inches.  I can never pass up an opportunity to get out in the snow.  Maybe I should live in Erie.  I did learn something though.  If you ever have your phone outside on a hot day the phone will eventually shut off if the device gets too hot.  Well the same thing happens in the cold.  At the four mile turn around I took my phone out and the screen went black.

Speaking of Erie the snow continues to pile up.  When I last touched base on Erie they had received 53 inches of snow in 30 hours between Christmas and the following morning.  Since then they have managed to add another 29.3 inches.  That puts the total for the month at 121.3 inches.  Previously the most snow they ever had in one month was 66 inches.  Part of what makes these numbers so incredible is because of the banding, you do not have to go very far outside the city to see the numbers drop quickly.  The city just happened to be in the bullseye.  It will be interesting to see how much they end up getting for the season and how record breaking that could be.  Hitting 200 inches for a major city would be icing on the cake.

The big story this week besides the plunging temperatures will be the question of a coastal storm.  That question comes up a lot for our area during the winter.  This one is unique because it is basically coming up straight from the south.  The European model has continually trended slightly west albeit slightly.  If it continues that trend there might be a story.  As of this morning here are the predicted totals to give you an idea of how close this is to the coast.

Atlantic City = 8 inches
Allentown = 2 inches
New York = 2 inches
Harrisburg = 0 inches

Even New England misses the big event as it strengthens near Maine and unloads in Canada.

The GFS isn't buying into any of this as of now except that the storm strengthens once past the U.S.  At this point these models are having trouble agreeing on a few things.  One model has an all rain event for the second potential system next week and the other has all snow.  That's a pretty big difference.  So now we play the back and forth game until this system arrives Wednesday night.  All I can say at this point is the further east you are the better the chance you see accumulating snow.

I'll post a 2017 recap later today.