Central PA Summer 2026 Discussion/Obs Thread

[Voyager]

1 hour ago, mahantango#1 said:

No rain here since last evening. I guess the snook holds special powers to get rain.

Well, I am a water hauler, so maybe as snow begets snow, water begets water...lol

[Itstrainingtime]

Rain continues - up to .2" at home for the day and .3" for the past 2 days. Should eek out several more hundredths of an inch. 

[canderson]

29 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Rain continues - up to .2" at home for the day and .3" for the past 2 days. Should eke out several more hundredths of an inch. 

Wild. No rain here today and the sun is poking out now. 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

1 hour ago, canderson said:

Wild. No rain here today and the sun is poking out now. 

I was thinking the same as I stare out the window here into the capital city.  There was a sharp cutoff just southeast of Harrisburg, which was actually modeled very well by the Meso's this morning.  I think I'm going to be up around a third of an inch back home.

[Itstrainingtime]

23 minutes ago, Mount Joy Snowman said:

I was thinking the same as I stare out the window here into the capital city.  There was a sharp cutoff just southeast of Harrisburg, which was actually modeled very well by the Meso's this morning.  I think I'm going to be up around a third of an inch back home.

Wunderground stations near you would support that, a lot of them around .3" give or take. Interestingly, the stations down here recorded a bit less despite being further south. I finished with .21" at home so your area was a nice little jack today. 

[Mount Joy Snowman]

42 minutes ago, Itstrainingtime said:

Wunderground stations near you would support that, a lot of them around .3" give or take. Interestingly, the stations down here recorded a bit less despite being further south. I finished with .21" at home so your area was a nice little jack today. 

Yep looks like a smidge over .3” in the gauge. I’ll take what I can get! Official reading in the morning. 

[mahantango#1]

Andrea Michaels FOX43  ·

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PA is leading neighboring states in tornadoes

Not exactly where we want to be leading the pack, but so far, we’ve have 20 confirmed tornadoes in 2026.  All 20 of those were this month (June), with more than a dozen of these happening two Sundays ago with the severe weather outbreak on the 14th.

 Most of these tornadoes have occurred along the western half of the state, but you’ll recall one of them was confirmed in Lancaster County last week.

I’d also like to include that these numbers came from the SPC’s records. There were a few tornado warnings yesterday, so it’s possible that this number changes slightly in the days to come if any storm surveys are performed. I made this graphic and scheduled it earlier in the day, so I think that disclaimer is important, but it still doesn’t change where we stand.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

Low of 57 and .31” of rainfall. Amazing day ahead. I love where we live. 

[Superstorm]

57.7F in Lanco with 0.30” of much needed rain.


.

[mahantango#1]

[mahantango#1]

[ChescoWx]

Plenty of lows in the 50's across the area this morning with the lowest being the 50.0 at the Warwick DEOS. Today will be our 9th day in the last 10 with slightly below normal temperatures. Great weather through Thursday before rain chances increase again by Thursday night into Saturday morning. We should slowly warm up next week to above normal temperatures as we close out the month of June.

[mahantango#1]

From Facebook: ** RING OF FIRE PATTERN **

Who's ready for the 'ring of fire' pattern next week? A large heat dome will set up in the Ohio Valley, bringing in the high heat and humidity. Even though we will be on the edge of this heat, we will still have temperatures and humidity levels push well above average, with dew points likely into the 70s (oppressive) range. Depending on the exact position of this high-pressure system, we may also be in the axis for storm clusters to move around this ridge of high pressure, which gives this the name 'ring of fire'. These storm clusters will need to be watched, as they will be moving into areas of very high instability and elevated wind shear. It is possible that if this ridge expands, it would push the storm complexes more into New England than into Pennsylvania. Regardless, next week will be rather active between the heat and storm potential! #PAwx #Pennsylvania #June #July #Summer #HeatDome

[Yardstickgozinya]

5 hours ago, mahantango#1 said:

From Facebook: ** RING OF FIRE PATTERN **

Who's ready for the 'ring of fire' pattern next week? A large heat dome will set up in the Ohio Valley, bringing in the high heat and humidity. Even though we will be on the edge of this heat, we will still have temperatures and humidity levels push well above average, with dew points likely into the 70s (oppressive) range. Depending on the exact position of this high-pressure system, we may also be in the axis for storm clusters to move around this ridge of high pressure, which gives this the name 'ring of fire'. These storm clusters will need to be watched, as they will be moving into areas of very high instability and elevated wind shear. It is possible that if this ridge expands, it would push the storm complexes more into New England than into Pennsylvania. Regardless, next week will be rather active between the heat and storm potential! #PAwx #Pennsylvania #June #July #Summer #HeatDome

My kind of weather. Let's do this 

[SnowPlowGuy88]

7 hours ago, mahantango#1 said:

From Facebook: ** RING OF FIRE PATTERN **

Who's ready for the 'ring of fire' pattern next week? A large heat dome will set up in the Ohio Valley, bringing in the high heat and humidity. Even though we will be on the edge of this heat, we will still have temperatures and humidity levels push well above average, with dew points likely into the 70s (oppressive) range. Depending on the exact position of this high-pressure system, we may also be in the axis for storm clusters to move around this ridge of high pressure, which gives this the name 'ring of fire'. These storm clusters will need to be watched, as they will be moving into areas of very high instability and elevated wind shear. It is possible that if this ridge expands, it would push the storm complexes more into New England than into Pennsylvania. Regardless, next week will be rather active between the heat and storm potential! #PAwx #Pennsylvania #June #July #Summer #HeatDome

From an outdoor worker, kindly take this forecast and shove it lol

[mahantango#1]

10 hours ago, SnowPlowGuy88 said:

From an outdoor worker, kindly take this forecast and shove it lol

[mahantango#1]

12 hours ago, Yardstickgozinya said:

My kind of weather. Let's do this 

[mahantango#1]

US National Weather Service State College PA 

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Thursday, Jun 25 @ 5:30 AM | Showers and thunderstorms return to the forecast today and tonight, mostly confined to NW PA through midday, then slowly advancing south and east. A few isolated storms may become severe, mainly in NW Pa

[mahantango#1]

 

 

[pawatch]

58 degrees for the low this morning.

Fish bite has been extremely slow.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

Low of 58. Hoping for some beneficial rains the next three days but not super confident we get a whole lot. Heat builds for 4th of July week. 

[Superstorm]

57F in Lancaster this morning.  It is going to be a scorcher in a few days.

[Mount Joy Snowman]

Crystal Ball says we end the month with a mean temp of 73.9 degrees, about a degree and a half AN and good for 13th warmest all-time.  Book it.

[TheDreamTraveler]

The days leading up to the 4th look like they're going to be very hot

[canderson]

Yea 98 am 75% humidity won’t be fun. 

[ChescoWx]

A really interesting statistic for the entire USA which exactly mirrors the data I share here from the philly burbs of Chester County. This below analysis measures not the typical metric of 90+ days but unusual hot periods of at least 4 days on average across the entire country where the average temperature reaches a level based on historical records that would be expected to only occur once every 10 years. Look how much hotter the entire nation was back in 1930's and 1940's compared to today! No matter how much we hear about how hot it is today we have still not reached that peak heating from the 1930 through 1942 period which matches the hottest period here in Chester County PA.

[Jns2183]

Those first 4 days July is going to burn out the grass here and send us into not good drought conditions. For whatever reason @canderson and I have missed most of the rain this month. I sit at 1.25". We are in not good shape here and have been muddling along due to cool temperatures. That's all about io change and my soil moisture sensor already is at lowest ever 35%.

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[canderson]

Has anyone else had issues accessing this site the last day or so? 

[Jns2183]

Has anyone else had issues accessing this site the last day or so? 

It goes in and out

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[Jns2183]

Camp Hill enters the late-June/early-July heat with essentially no water in the bank. PRISM put just 0.76" on the cell over June 12–24, and my 5cm soil moisture tells the real story: it peaked near 62% after the June 10–12 rain and has bled straight down to ~37% since, with no resupply. The cumulative water balance (PRISM rain minus reference ET0) sits around −6.9" since April 1 — and that's before the heat arrives. This is a drained antecedent state, not a buffered one.

@canderson I don't think you remember remember 1999 here because I was in high school still I remember that summer vividly as unbearable


The forecast offers no relief. Pulling real Open-Meteo QPF rather than a zero assumption, the next ten days deliver about 0.18" of rain against ~2.2" of ET0 demand, dragging the balance to roughly −8.9" by July 4. ET0 ramps to 0.28–0.32"/day as highs hit 99–103° on July 1–3. Worse, the little rain that's offered falls before the heat peak and in sub-0.10" dribbles that largely evaporate before reaching the root zone. Functionally, plan as if it's a zero-rain stretch.


To gauge where this goes, I searched 45 years of PRISM for 4-day stretches matching the upcoming signature — mean highs near 100°, dewpoints around 70°, near-zero rain — and found seven. The key split is antecedent moisture. The two most recent analogs (2011, last June 2025) walked in wet, with a soil buffer, and broke within days. The genuinely dry-antecedent cases — 1988 and the two 1999 events — are the right comparison for 2026, and they resolved three different ways: 1988 broke in 48 hours, 1999b ground on 25 days before a 2" dump, and 1999a never recovered, posting under 0.9" over the following month of compounding drought.
Bottom line: this isn't a remarkable heat event by temperature alone — four analogs hit similar highs. It's the combination of humid 100° heat onto drained soil that puts us in the worst tier the record offers, alongside the late-1990s flash-drought setups rather than the well-watered recent years.

Dry soil suppresses its own convection, so recovery depends entirely on an external trigger — a front or organized storm breaking through. The single thing worth watching is the medium-range guidance for that first genuine frontal passage in early-to-mid July. Its arrival is the 1988 path; its continued absence is the 1999a grind. Right now the forecast's leading edge looks more like the latter.

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