ChescoWx

You had me till you mentioned the CC phrase that is always the correct answer these days....

Welp if we don't have the cold....at least for those that love snow we just experienced the 2nd snowiest decade ever in the 2010's.....and the last 2 decades have been top 4 all-time snow decades!

Just typical weather cycles....it will of course come to pass again....

Watch out for black ice out there this AM - I just slid on a bridge....

0.36" of rain since last evening here in NW Chesco - an over performer!

A little more but only 2.13" here in NW Chester County PA since November 1st through today - normal over that span is 6.64"

Welcome back!!

GFS back to snow N and W for Christmas AM....it is on a hot streak!!!

You may be right.....or maybe not

While the past 2 months have been very dry overall we will be finishing 2021 with above normal rainfall in Chester County PA

Absolutely as we are in a clear warming phase.....but as always warming phases will be followed by cooling. Our climate periods are and will always be changing - no one can deny climate change!!

not to get into a big discussion but...."changed radically" don't see it....now a clear current cyclical warming period absolutely! Still suspect the next cooling cycle which I am confident starts later this decade will once again bring us back to a colder 3 to 4 decades of colder climate. Simply the normal ebb and flow of climate that we have and will always see!

Out in the burbs of Chesco 77/78 had 1.0" of snow in December and finished with 59.8" while 78/79 had no snow in December but 3" in November and finished with 39.2" of snow for the season

Indeed!! Chester County has only had 14 seasons or 11% of the time (1972-3 had no snow at all) where the 1st snow occurred in January. Historically, 89% of the time the 1st snow occurs before New Year's Day. Only 1 year - 2016 ever recorded their 1st snowfall of the year in January and ended the season with above normal (36" annually for Chesco) Below are the 14 years with the first snow in January and the seasonal snow totals. Average snow in those years was only 19.9" or 55% of normal seasonal snow First Snow in January # Year Snowfall 1 1942 9.0 2 1944 18.7 3 1949 20.9 4 1957 12.3 5 1966 34.6 6 1972 19.8 7 1975 14.5 8 1976 19.0 9 1980 12.8 10 1992 9.5 11 2000 29.7 12 2002 11.1 13 2007 25.3 14 2016 40.8 Average 19.9

yep not 1 but 2 fantasy storms.....

GFS doing swell this year so far....here is it's model run for between Christmas and NY Eve morning

For those who like snow....I always say bring the cold and the snow shall follow....

Today's high in NW Chester County was 59.1 this was the warmest December 16 since the 64 back in 1975 - the all-time record high for the date is the 67 back in 1971

Sounds close to Coatesville....just always seems to snow a little more in Western Chesco than the Lehigh Valley

Here in Western Chester County PA - top 5 early December Snowstorms 12/14/1917 - 14.5" 12/6/2003 - 12.5" 12/4/1957 - 12.0" 12/7/1910 - 10.9" 12/5/2002 - 9.0"

No record high so far here in Chesco "only" made it to 62.4 (record is 68 in 1897) - though close to just 6 years ago when on this date in 2015 we hit 63.1. High wind gust so far today 30.2 mph on Tempest and 24 mph on the Vantage Pro with .05" of rain so far

Up to 53.6 here in NW Chesco - high wind gust 16 mph so far on VP and 15.6 mph on the Tempest

The overnight GFS does indeed show the turn to colder by next Sunday and for now models a snowstorm during Christmas week - of course this will change 50x over the next 10 days....but something to keep an eye on

Now before our LV friend says all of the data is invalid blah blah....I of course have never used or presented any other Chester County sites for my data analytics or weather website ever until we started this fun little thread. I have for the last 23 years focused entirely only on Coatesville PA weather data as it represents the ONLY complete data set from 1894 and updated through today for ALL weather parameters and has zero gaps in any observation data. I have never done any QC on the other sites in the County and simply reported them on this thread to corroborate analysis for Coatesville which I have done in this thread - even though LV doesn't like it.

Yep it looks like the NCDC has faulty data for West Chester for April 1895. See below - it looks like they simply calculated all falling precipitation as snow and of course no other station in the county reported any snow that month.