Unusual Wet, Cold Stats From Mid-Atlantic

Finally, the unusually cold and wet May in the Northeast will end this weekend, just in time for Memorial Day. I know here in State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map], I can't remember such a cold, wet May, and we had snow once this month (and twice if you count the surrounding mountains). It seems like every day featured rain - it's been more than a week since I've been able to mow my lawn, which is growing out of control. The basic weather pattern is to blame, and our hard-core meteorologists like Elliot Abrams (PREMIUM | PRO), Henry Margusity (PREMIUM | PRO), and Joe Lundberg (PREMIUM | PRO) can give you more information about that pattern and what will break it this weekend.

But can I show you some statistics to prove how cold and wet it's been? You know I can! An interview with one of our meteorologists says that York, PA has seen 34% more precipitation this month than they normally do in March and April. But here's a map of precipitation compared to normal for the last two weeks, as you can see, some areas in the mid-Atlantic are up by 500%!

And as you can see on the graph below, Williamsport is having quite the wet Spring, being above normal for precipitation since February.

Looking at a bar graph for State College, note that we've only had about 7 days without rain in the past 25.

As far as temperatures, only 3 days have been above normal since May 9th, with the day before yesterday providing Williamsport, PA with a record low temperature! Expanding the graph out for the whole year, you can see that the last few weeks have actually be falling at a pretty steep rate, when they should be rising this time of year (un-scientific trend lines added to graph by me).

Here are temperature observations for State College... I've highlighted days that were near or below normal in a light blue. As you can see, they have been the predominant ones. Note also the dark blue X's, where we had days in which the highest temperature was near the average low!