Will Snow Accumulate in the High Ground of PA? (05-01-2011)

Here we are in the first week of the "not-so-much this year" merry month of May, and the modeling is suggesting that snow will at the very least be in the air in central and northern PA during the late Tuesday evening-Wednesday time frame!  If you notice the 0ºC line at 850 mb, this is where snow will likely be observed mixed with the cold rain in this mid-week period.  Also note the surface temperature anomaly for the eastern 2/3 of the US for this Tuesday!  Global warming is to blame for this as you are all so very much aware!

This week will do little to encourage us that a nice spring spell of weather is drawing near.  In fact, temps will be several degrees below normal for this week and precip in our neck of Penn's Woods will be above normal......and next week for that matter as the 6-10 outlook suggests:

The upcoming period of rainy and raw weather (Tuesday-Wednesday) is essentially a nor'easter that will slowly grind its way up the east coast to New England by Friday morning.  With the northwesterly flow behind this cyclone, a brief period of drying will occur....but this will be short lived:

In what looked like a drying trend for next weekend is now beginning to quickly fill with even more moisture advancing from the west and northwest.....Couple that moisture influx with cool, damp air in place at both the surface and aloft does not bode well for sun worshippers.  Old Sol is on leave for most of the next 10 days! In fact, if one is to believe the GFS, another round of moderate rain may develop over the mid-Atlantic states sometime in the next Sunday-Tuesday time frame as shown below:

And if that is not enough, look at the American model for the middle of "not-so much this year" merry month of May:

So as you can see, we are looking at what might likely be a continuation of the cool and damp weather we experienced for most of April.  But on a much brighter note, Kay and I spotted a monarch butterfly yesterday fluttering from plant to plant looking for its necessary nectar.  How ironic, a MONARCH was seen on Saturday....but if you carefully listened to to butterfly, you could hear this low drone of what I thought was Bono...."I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".  That's due to the fact that many of the flowering species seem to be a bit late this spring....or this monarch felt compelled to come on the scene this weekend in honor of his distant relatives! 

As for this blog page, I did add some quick links for those of you who have an interest in easily accessing pertainent wx info.  They are located over on the right. The bottom link will show what to take note of in our wonderous night sky if that sort of thing interests you.....and there is even a planet roundup section equiped with diagrams that will greatly enable one of our esteemed administrators to monitor the planetary alignments with his own recourse.

I hope ya'll enjoy this new format.  I must personally thank "Mr. T" for the blog suggestion and "Aquaman" for the technical assistance in getting my new best friend up and running on Al Gore's internet!

Enjoy your Sunday and this upcoming week!

Smitty

AA:  Cooler than normal and wetter than normal for as long as this eye can see!