Warm Front Attacks Central Pennsylvania
Another slow day blogging owing to another intense workday, my apologies. And now... (cue evil music) ATTACK OF THE WARM FRONT!
Before I retired to bed last night I noticed a couple of odd weather happenings. One... a check of the weather station at my house showed that the temperature had been going up all day and, although it was in the upper 30s overnight, it was pushing 50 at 9 PM. Two, was that thunder I just heard?
I thought to myself: "Self, this is strange. The average temperature this time of night in Central Pennsylvania should be around 35 degrees and falling." Checking the PA Temp Map on AccuWeather.com Professional showed me that my house was the least of the problem - a finger of warm air was pushing lower 60s in some places in southwest Pennsylvania!
The Pennsylvania Wind Map on Pro confirmed that converging wind from the southwest was pushing the warmth into that corner of the state. What could be responsible for this late-November heat?
It was, of course, a Warm Front. A quick check of the Oversized Government Surface Weather Map confirmed it (whoa, Pennsylvania tipped over, sorry about that!)
Warm Fronts, as you might surmise, occur where warm air pushes into a cool air mass and can quickly change a cool evening to something warmer. They are more rare during the winter in this part of the nation. This one came not only with warmth, but thunder and lightning. And not just a little lightning, but strikes to the tune of nearly 1000 in a two hour period!
In fact, the State College Radar briefly showed a tornadic signature with a storm just to my west (probably inaccurate - this time of year the NEXRADs can become confused).
When that line of storms passed through around 10 PM, we got pretty high winds, which were followed overnight by additional high winds after the cold front passed (you can see the temperature start to go down when that happened around 2 AM.
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