Central PA Spring 2026 Discussion/Obs Thread

[Ruin]

12 hours ago, pasnownut said:

Yeah this weeks "warmup" so far has been an epic fail.  Just looked and NWS has me in upper 40's today and tomorrow.  i memory serves a week ago I thought I'd be in the 60's and some said ticklin 70.  Regardless this is typical spring weather and while I HATE mud....we need the rain and looks like plenty of chances to suppress the spring wildfire worries.

Why i always bitch they can't get most things right jist 3 days or so out

[canderson]

Heavy rain. Good spring stuff. 

[Itstrainingtime]

Thunderstorm in progress here. Cats aren't happy.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

Just now, Itstrainingtime said:

Thunderstorm in progress here. Cats aren't happy.

Yep just saw my first lightning in quite a while. Heavy batch getting ready to roll through. Our dogs don’t love it either. 

[mahantango#1]

1.09 rain so far today. No thunder or lightning here.

[Blizzard of 93]

10 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

Yep just saw my first lightning in quite a while. Heavy batch getting ready to roll through. Our dogs don’t love it either. 

Thunderstorms in Winter mean snow within 10 days according to the old time folklore!

[Blizzard of 93]

Here is our next window of Winter opportunity after the muted warmup.

[canderson]

Had some thunder but didn’t notice lightning. 

[AccuChris]

1.24” in the bucket today here in Lebanon


.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

6 minutes ago, AccuChris said:

1.24” in the bucket today here in Lebanon


.

Nothing even remotely close to that here. Looking at the radar throughout the day, I figured you guys to my north and west would see much bigger totals. 

[canderson]

.85” of rain today for me.  .6” of that was in an hour and half this evening. 

[MAG5035]

0.65” of rain here yesterday.

Eastern PA definitely looks to be denied a full torch this weekend as cool air damming, cloud cover and maritime flow off the Atlantic have a firm hold east of the mountains. Meanwhile from the Laurels westward, increasing breezy southwest flow is going to make for much warmer temps, likely making a run at 65-70 or so on Saturday. Sus Valley may eventually mix down 50s to near 60 later Saturday/Sat night as a weak frontal passage approaches. 

Mon-Wed is the real time frame where it looks quite warm, as it has looked consistently on models for like the last week. Tuesday is the best chance for at least the southern half of PA to make a run at 70ºF ahead of the next system. Some difference between Euro and GFS with the Euro being much more expansive in PA with the very warm temps and GFS more confined to southern PA. 

Much more uncertainty abound beyond that, big differences between the Euro and GFS. Euro has been way colder around the St Patty’s day timeframe and also has a storm on tonight’s 0z run. GFS bottles up cold air more in Canada and runs a further north storm track. Both models and ensembles develop the really negative WPO, which should put a lot more cold back in Canada. They’re also pretty firm on a pretty positive AO and NAO though, which would suggest cold intrusions into the US are limited and brief. Difference area is the PNA, where the Euro/ensembles (and Canadian) reverses a pretty negative PNA to positive to set up western ridging and a chance at the kind of storm it puts out at 0z tonight and holding a cold pattern more. The GFS op just keeps the PNA solidly negative and its ensembles do reflect the other models more with the reversal but is more neutral. I’m fairly pessimistic overall on any decent snow chances in that timeframe mainly due to the +NAO/AO, but building a western ridge even briefly would at least allow for a window to try to line something up. 

[Voyager]

1.21" yesterday for Tamaqua.