BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Thanks to a storm that blitzed the region early Saturday, the Lehigh Valley stands alone as the only major climate site in the area with above-average snowfall this winter.
At least 25.2 inches have been measured at Lehigh Valley International Airport, topping the normal year-to-date snowfall of 22.5 inches.
Philadelphia has recorded 11.2 inches — about 5 inches below normal — while Harrisburg has 18.7 inches, just under its average of 20.6 inches.
Scranton-Wilkes Barre and Newark are both far off the mark, while Atlantic City is more than 5 inches off its year-to-date snowfall.
Word of weekend: ‘frontogenesis’
If you’re still wondering how you went to bed Friday night and awoke to more than a foot of snow Saturday (depending on your location), you can blame it on frontogenesis.
That's a process in which clashing air masses result in the formation of a localized front and a very narrow corridor of extremely heavy snow.
On Saturday, that band stretched from Berks County eastward into New Jersey toward Raritan Bay, the National Weather Service said.
It dropped 5.2 inches in just one hour in Hellertown, and there were numerous reports of 2 to 4 inches in one hour in other locations.
“This band sat for 2 to 3 hours and didn’t move,” EPAWA meteorologist Bobby Martrich said in his Weather Weeklies video on Sunday.
Weather Weeklies for Sunday 2/18/2024: we recap the banding feature that set up Friday night and why it wasn't foreseen, and cover the dramatic long range changes that took place this week:https://t.co/gckQA5Mhef
— Bobby Martrich | EPAWA (@epawawx) February 18, 2024
In the days leading up to the storm, the models consistently showed strong potential for such a band well south of the Lehigh Valley. It just shifted north and plastered our area instead.
Is the end of winter in sight?
A week or two ago, forecasters expected a pattern that would push sustained cold straight through the middle of March.
But now, models show a pattern that scours out the cold and appears to put a wrap on meteorological winter, which runs through Feb. 29. (Astronomical winter runs until March 19, which marks the start of the vernal equinox).
“It’s going to turn quite mild, it looks like,” Martrich said, describing temperatures that will push into the 50s near the end of the month.
The eight-to-14 day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center also shows a high probability of above-average temperatures, prompting forecasters to examine whether we’ve reached the end of our snowfall chances.
“I’m not going to completely throw in the towel,” Martrich said.
“We may be done, but there is an opportunity for something to thread the needle yet, and that’s all you can really expect the rest of the way.”
