Central PA Spring Break Snow Storm, 3 Feet in VT
Well, we had to wait all winter (in fact technically meteorological winter ended last week and the Penn State students are on Spring Break now), but we finally got our snowstorm here in Central PA. Penn State reports 10 inches from last night's storm. Amounts to the northeast in interior New England are even more impressive - nearly three feet!
Jay, VT: 34.0"
Bloomingdale, NY: 32.0"
Saint Pamphile, ME: 27.0"
Towanda, PA: 20.0"
Stewartstown, NH: 16.0"
Terra Alta, WV: 9.0"
Mount Leconte, TN: 8.0"
Mount Mitchell, NC: 7.0"
Tazewell, VA: 6.0"
Oakland, MD: 5.0"
Above are a few photos I took last night and this morning here at State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map]. Below is the snowfall estimate from NOHRSC (I assume the snow in CT is bogus).
As Henry said on his Facebook Fan Club, the models told us this was coming -- the NMM predicted it Saturday afternoon, and the morning and afternoon HRR model nailed it Sunday morning and afternoon, although some meteorologists (including myself) thought that much snow was only an outside chance. After all, it was in the 50s and raining hard Sunday morning! AccuWeather.com's Sunday forecast was underdone in our area and the NWS didn't even issue a Winter Weather Advisory for State College until nearly 3:00, after which point it had been snowing for several hours already. The initial forecast then was for "3 to 5 inches." Road turned terrible quickly because the heavy rain had washed the salt off of them. Here is a video with some photos from nearby, including AccuWeather HQ:
Ironically, this was our biggest storm this season here in Central PA. I blogged earlier this year how we were one of only two reporting stations on the East Coast with much-below-normal snowfall. This has come close to rectifying that. To see just how bad of a shaft we got this winter, I looked last week at the last 10 years of records from Penn State:
A couple of interesting things jump out. Before yesterday's snow, only year had an equally smaller "big storm" during the season: 2008-2009, but we only waited until February 9th for that one. It took us until the 21st to match that 4 inches this season and yesterday's 10-inch snowstorm will mean that we "waited" until March 6th for our biggest storm, further lengthening that record. Only one other season (2000-2001) featured its biggest snowfall in March. We usually get our biggest snow in February.
