ChescoWx

Continue to think this is mainly a sleet event N and W of Philly...with minimal snow even in burbs at the onset. The dry air drilling in however is impressive - but overrunning will get things going a bit earlier than modeled. With low DPs... temps will fall at onset and be slow to rise...hopefully the cold air gets scoured out before evening rush hour or else it will not be a pretty one out in the philly burbs as we transition to non-solid by late PM. By the way I for one think these early storms bode quite well for an active season with well above normal snowfall. I am working up my local winter forecast for the local paper and think we do a bit better than even last year's 59" of snow out here....just my 2 cents.

6z Euro really not much of a cave although the snow totals are ridiculous as it is counting sleet as snow...even EPS has 5" at Coatesville

Latest Wxsim for NW Chesco with 6z GFS/NAM combo has: Sleet/Snow mix arriving by 9am tomorrow temp at 30.7 Mod sleet by noon temp 31.3 Heavy Sleet at 2pm temp 31.6 (0.56" of w.e.) Heavy Sleet/ZR mix at 6pm temp 31.3 (0.86" of w.e.) ZR at 9pm ending temp 31.7 Plain rain by midnight temp 32.6 Heavy Rain at 3am temp 33.6 (1.40" w.e.) Back to Heavy Rain/Snow mix at 6am temp 33.8 (1.80" w.e.) Ends by 7am total precip w.e. 1.92"

Latest Wxsim with 6z GFS/NAM data has snow/IP to start on Thursday AM and then an off and on battle of precip types here in NW Chesco with the temp just above freezing for most of the event + plus over 2" of w.e. falling. This will no doubt change with the next run....by the way also showing a period of heavy snow next Sunday AM...

the 6z Euro has 9" of snow out here at KMQS with the end of week event....that is not likely. My WXSIM has a mix of wintry stuff to start Thursday AM and then over to a chilly rain with a 1/2" to 1" of snow/IP. The pattern does seem to want to keep noreasters forming....will be an interesting winter

Never ever...has a tremendous cold and stormy bias....but he is still excellent at pattern recognition....

Latest from JB at WB The Verdict The warmth is coming, but I think more cold than this model run is saying is coming right after it. So we have the front 10 days that will be cold, the following 10 days will be warmer, but then it will be colder again. I don't have any faith in the modeling after that, as I think a cold, stormy December is on the way.

Some flurries North of here and also some streamers to the west that might clip NW Chesco later this AM otherwise looks like temps will likely slowly fall later this PM leading to potentially our 1st freezing temp of the season before midnight. If so our growing season will end after lasting 203 days - this is 28 days less than last year and would be our shortest growing season since the 188 days in 2013

1st 8 days of November have run +7.1 above average for NW Chester County - should see much of that vanish over the next 10 days with much chillier temps. Point and click from NWS has a high of 51 today...Wxsim says temps stay in the mid-40's. Will side closer to the WXSIM today with rain moving in by early PM with some virga already over the area this AM. Wxsim sees around 2" of rain by midnight tonight. This will continue our progress toward making this the wettest season since NWS Coop records for Chester County began in 1894. We are now only 7.23" away from the record of 75.12" set back in 1996.

I am thinking that after our relatively brief turn to well below normal temps next week with the chance of some snow in the air (not accumulating)....I think a near normal Thanksgiving Week followed by an above normal final week of November. With Dec starting w/above normal temps. Really thinking December could open with well above normal temps kind of like 2012 but I don't think the above normal stretch will last as long as that December. More troughing in east by the 10th or so - hopefully in time to support a white Christmas....we can dream can't we?

High today 57.2 - today may be one of our last above normal days for the remainder of the month. Increasingly good chance we finish November as the coldest one since 2014. Rain wise exactly 1.00" of rain fell over the last 2 days this brings us up to 2.93" this month and a whopping 37.26" just since July 1st! We are now only 7.23" behind the all-time Chester County record of 75.12" from back in 1996

With the 1.93" of rain since last night we have now received 66.89" eclipsing 1979 as the 2nd wettest year in our recorded weather history from 1894 to Present here in Chester County PA. The wettest year in history was 1996 when we recorded 75.12" of rain

another 0.80" of rain has fallen here in East Nantmeal in the last 45 minutes bringing our daily rain up to 1.53" so far and still heavy rain. Temperature is down to 56.9

Don with our 0.73" so far today in the NW Philly burbs of Chester County Pa we have now recorded 0.73" today which puts our YTD rain/melted snow total at 65.69" with more incoming with the frontal passage over the next hour or so. This places this year at number 3 all-time since our local records began back in 1894. We are now only behind 1996 with 75.12" and 1979 with 66.88" of rain

Heavy Rain here in NW Chesco with 0.73" so far today - look like heaviest line still to come through over the next hour or so with the FROPA looks like the cold front is only about 14 miles to my NW so expect temps to drop pretty quickly from the current 65.1 to an almost 10 degree drop over the next 2 hours to the mid to upper 50's Today's high was 68.9 - well above our normal high of 59.7 but well below our all-time high here in Chester County of 82 degrees back in 1982.

Updated winter forecast from WeatherBell October 31, 2018 Evolution to a cold, stormy winter is beginning. The most recent closest winters are 2002-03 and 2009-10. No change to the man setup first espoused back in August and then late September. Forecast made a bit colder for the heart of winter. Snowfall map honed a bit. Snowfall: Discussion The setup for this winter has been dealt with exhaustively in previous forecast packages. There is no use flogging a dead horse, as I am happy with our diagnosis. A new round of modeling will come out starting next week and we have not yet had the Euro do its usual flip-flop, as it has done on us before. Then again, we only see its seasonal forecast once a month, and the CFSv2 has been trying desperately to mimic the non-winters of 2001-02 and 2011-12. Given they are antilogs with SSTs and solar activity, it seems kind of hard to believe. The El Niño, including the type we envisioned using the SOI theory from the previous winter, is evolving. Cold water remains to the west of Australia, which would tend to discourage a major jaunt into the warm phases of the MJO that produce a lot of convection there and something associated with a large scale warm pattern across the U.S. The warm pool in the North Pacific that we jumped on in 2013-14 and 2014-15 is something that is there, too. Nino3.4 in the central Pacific looks to be warmer than Nino1+2 in the eastern Pacific. There are a lot of markers for a cold winter here. The Verdict This outlook is short on explanations since we have gone over the ideas in detail in previous discussions. I still feel we have a good reason to suspect a long, cold winter is evolving. The evolution of the winter pattern will be strongly dependent on the development of the trough in the Pacific from near the Dateline to near 150°W to the south of Alaska. This should leave a trough over the eastern part of the U.S. for the heart of the winter. The closest analogs since the turn of the century are 2002-03 and 2009-10, so we are following that kind of analog into the early winter months. The bottom line is the next 6 months should average below normal with the deepest of the cold relative to averages in January and February, but cold lasting well into the spring again.

Attached is Alan Huffman's RaleighWx Winter Forecasts http://raleighwxmodels.com/awhuffma/Winter/Winter2018-19Forecast.pdf

I have not put together my winter forecast yet for the local paper.... but my thoughts will indeed be a slightly above normal temperature season but with above normal snow season even on the coastal plain down in Philly, SJ and Delaware. I see an above normal number of noreasters this winter season and all it takes is 2 of those with the right track to put those areas above their normal snowfall which in the coastal plain averages in the 20" to 23" range. I agree with Steve that N and W will do better.... but relative to averages...for example here in Chester County we average from 32" to 37" of snowfall depending on elevation. I would not be surprised if both areas end up at a similar 140% of normal snowfall.

AM low was 34.3 our lowest temperature so far this fall season... with frost only evident down in the valleys below 600 ft asl. We have only seen very light spotty frost so far this season. Growing season looks likely to continue into November here in the soaring hills of NW Chester County PA. Today will be our 10th of last 13 days with below normal temps. After today we should be down to under 3 degrees above normal an incredible turn around from the 1st 2 weeks of the month.

AM Low 39.5 - looks like the growing season will continue here in the Frozen Tundra of NW Chesco into November - Wxsim has lowest temp over rest of month at 36. However, if Wxsim forecast temps were to verify over the remainder of the month we would finish at only 1.7 degrees above normal for the month and would be our chilliest October since 2015. Wxsim also shows 2.75" of rain by Sunday with the storm this weekend/

Yes - It's really just the fact weather has always and will continue to move toward the norm/averages. However, we still only valid true climate norms/averages that go back no more than 150 years....just a small slice of the earth's constantly changing and evolving climate and it's phases and stages.

With yesterday's 9th of the last 11 days of below normal temps we have plunged from an average temp of 68.1 or +11.2 above normal on October 12th to now an average temp of 59.4 which is only +4.0 degrees above normal. Today looks to be our last chance of near to above normal temps this month. It is looking increasingly likely that we may totally reverse the positive anomaly from the 1st 2 weeks of the month before month's end.

I did look at that some years back but did not remember it having the data edit function...I may indeed revisit that one - thanks again!! Paul

4th of last 5 mornings in the 30's but with this AM being the lowest at 35.1.....but of course still no freeze here on the non-frozen tundra of the Welsh Mountain anticline in NW Chester County

Thanks! I have also tried weather display and am unfortunately not a big fan....I can't believe nothing better than VWS has surfaced in all these years.... but thanks!! Paul