Hurricane Agnes

I ended up with 1.87" of rain on Saturday and yesterday I discovered that my Snowdrops had emerged and are blooming, so there's that! Also had to swerve around groundhog roadkill yesterday, so they are apparently awake and moving above ground instead of sleeping. The Punxsutawney handlers may end up trying to pull Phil out of his burrow next weekend and discover he is long gone foraging elsewhere.

They are saying that the area was socked in with fog at the time and that it was so bad that the police had grounded their own copters. Just horrible!

I know there's a slide of me when I was about 3 or 4 standing in front of the car (I think it was in the fall) with his "slide camera" case on a strap around my neck. In full living color. We had started converting some of those slides about 20 years ago and since the film itself was considered a "positive", they had to create negatives from those (at $1 a piece at the time) and then use the negatives to make prints. Now they have consumer units geared towards slides to illuminate/scan them and save the images digitally to the computer or a USB stick... One of my "projects" for one day.... one day.

I grew up in 2 different Ford station wagons (Country Squire and LTD Country Squire) and my mom used to dub the snow tires "the truck tires". We kept them in a basement closet. And yup, we were swapping them out all the way to the late '70s (right around the time of the blizzard of '78).

And to think that 1996 produced almost 3 times as much. I remember everyone had chains and snow tires (of course that was before the "all season" type tires too). Always had that twice-yearly ritual of putting on and then taking off the snow tires. The irony of 1966 was that summer, the east coast experienced a heatwave where many all-time high records were shattered and here in Philly, the temps tied the all-time high for the date (at the time) of 104 when that happened July 3 - https://www.weather.gov/phi/hist_phi I remember that some friends of my parents had a cottage in N. Cape May and we spent a couple weeks there for vacation during that hot summer (I think in August).

I had a picture somewhere of me and one of my sisters (the other wasn't born yet) after the "blizzard of '66", standing in front of our garage door with the snowsuits and shovels and Yogi Bear boots. Actually it was a slide pic because that was my dad's hobby and shooting on slide film allowed him to have color "photos" back in the '50s & '60s when regular consumer pics were generally only B&W (he had boxes and boxes of slides and we had been slowly converting them). Mt. Holly described it here (the hot links don't work so have to scroll down) - https://www.weather.gov/phi/hist_phi Article about that nor'easter - https://weatherworksinc.com/news/1966-christmas-snowstorm The snows before that year back to when I was born in the early '60s, were mostly the usual nickel & dimes.

Damn - AND the rolling blackouts. Forgot about that.

"Glacier" is the perfect word for it Not since the winters of '76 & '77 with their frigid temps (and their glaciers), did we have so much ice here. I remember back in '77 where I lived (lots of hills like where I am now) where the buses could not get up the hills due to the ice (with water on top), so they made people (like me) get off the bus and walk up to the top of the hill and get back on again. Those were the years when long johns became really popular again down here. It was a big change from the early '70s with the snow drought (not unlike we are seeing now). And like '76/'77 eventually heralded the blizzard of '78, so too did '94 eventually herald what happened in '96.

That song was a riot and done by a local Philly singer too. Philly area has become the "new Colorado" with "spring snow". My "high" yesterday was at midnight and was 33... and after that it dropped and never rose above 30 the rest of the day, with the "low" of 21 happening at midnight on the other end of the day. It bottomed out this morning (so far) at 21 (closer to 20 @ 20.5, than to 21), but has nudged up a bit to 22 and overcast. The dp of 7 at the moment, is truly arctic.

Not here in Philly. That period was the nightmare of the "ice storms". I think I literally counted around 17 individual events IMBY that I was white-knuckle commuting through to/from work, starting some time in December (and there had been a "rain every couple days" thing going on antecedent to that so it seemed inevitable). It was to the point where the tristate area had run out of salt and there were caravans of trucks that eventually came down from NY state to help with the shortage/unavailability of both road salt and consumer ice melt products. People were left with throwing sand, kitty litter, and table salt out on their walks. I remember the worst one that first week of January (the 7th I believe), when I had to go on a work-related trip down to Baltimore (by Amtrak) where I had planned to drive to 30th St. station early morning and park there to get on the train. And on my way down, I intended to go on I-76 (that I generally avoid) figuring it would have been better treated as a "primary (interstate) route", than my normal downtown route (the river drives). But literally, just as I approached the entrance ramp to I-76, the traffic report indicated that PennDot was about to close 76 because of the ice build-up, with cars/trucks getting stuck on the ramps, unable to go up or down them. So I was able to bypass that and continue on downtown along one of the river drives, and ease on into the station parking lots. Meanwhile I-76 was eventually completely closed with hundreds of cars and people trapped there for over 8 hours. While in Baltimore, I managed to find and bring home 3, 5lb bags of Halite in my suitcase that I handed off to my mom for her sidewalks. She ended up having the only portion of sidewalk on her block that was "clear and dry" to the cement. What was interesting too about the '94 ice storms was that many of the residents of the western suburbs learned the hard way that Rte 202 was considered a "secondary" route, meaning "delays" in road treatment while the "primaries" (interstates) were worked on as a priority... and the outrage was fierce. Forget if you live in the city proper, where the "main thoroughfare" streets were considered "tertiary", so good luck... So here in Philly in '94, it wasn't the snow depths that upstate/Lehigh Valley may have had, it was the nightmare of the ice. It was enough to uproot and pull down an old cedar tree between my mother's house and her neighbor's house, and when it went down, it extended some 50ft across the front yard abutting the house, and halfway into the street, just missing the neighbor's car. And as a historic note not mentioned for Philly - that 1994 winter was the last time that Philly recorded a below 0 temperature (recorded as a -5F at KPHL January 9, 1994). It's gotten close a few times with 1s and 2s and 3s but so far all above 0.

Looks like I may have maxed at 65 just as the rain was coming in (got 0.06" from that broken line and already had 0.07" earlier overnight between 2 - 3:30 am for a total of 0.13" so far today). Currently 63 and overcast.

64 here at post time with dp in the upper 50s. A convective line is on my doorstep.

Just smashed a stink bug. Currently 66 and overcast here. Have been able to open the windows and back door to air out the house.

Had a "low" of 48 this morning and it's currently 65 here and getting mostly cloudy. Dps are in the (somewhat) juicy low 50s.

Bottomed out at 22 here this morning - even with the puffs of wind that kept up overnight... so that was some serious arctic air (the low dp of 8 seems to confirm that). Currently 24 and clear.

And another squall coming through. This time with big flakes! Sun out with it too. Temp had gone back up to 36 after the last round.

Sun is back out and tht thing was moving fast. It did drop the temps down to 34 though. Nothing really stuck (mostly bounced off, blew around, and melted although there is about 0.1" on the coldest spots) but pretty cool.

Here we go! Getting that EAS squall warning! The graupel is kinda cool though. Temp is still 38.

Getting a flizzard of snow and graupel and the stuff is bouncing and blowing around on the street with the wind.

Looks like a blob of one is headed my way. Will see what happens when it hits these hills. Sun is obscured again. Only thing is the temp is @38 so not sure how it will manifest. ETA - am getting flakes this time!

GFS ensembles -- (also from what I have read, the PV is pretty strong at the moment which precludes it breaking apart).

Looking at overnight radar, I may have had some light returns overnight although temps remained above freezing through the night. Currently getting some light flakeage with a temp of 34.

Currently sitting at 50 here with vis. barely 1/10th of a mile. Was glad that Mt. Holly finally lofted something for this fog. Am up to 0.32" rain for the past 2 days so far (0.19" yesterday and 0.13" today).

Ended up with 1.31" rain Monday and 0.20" rain on Tuesday for 1.51" for the 2-day event. Had a high of 57 yesterday and am back down to a wintery 33 at the moment with some flurries.

Why not just start an OP thread?