Cold, Snow for Memorial Day Weekend

UPDATE 12 NOON: The NWS has lowered temperatures in Central PA but has raised them in the southwest portion of the state. The minimum appears to now be 30. You can see the latest map here. AccuWeather.com's forecast has also moderated since last night, with less areas below 40 degees.

ORIGINAL POST (9 a.m.): Earlier this week, models were predicting snow this weekend in parts of New England and the northern Appalachian mountains down to West Virginia. This morning, snow has been reported on official observations in Olean, N.Y., (south of Buffalo) and several viewers on the Facebook Pennsylvania Storm Chasers page have reported seeing snowflakes.

Wind chills were also in the 20s from New York state down the Appalachians into West Virginia and Maryland this morning:

Temperatures (projected last night by the NWS) were near freezing this morning and will fall into the mid-20s Saturday night south of Pittsburgh. The only saving grace is that the winds will keep frost from accumulating on plants in most of the Keystone State. Farther south in the West Virginia and Maryland mountains, the freeze or frost could severely damage gardens, flowers and even leaves (I remember once in the North Carolina mountains, a late freeze around May 10 turned some of the leaves brown for the summer).

Snow, frost or freeze anywhere in the Northeast (save maybe Maine and Mount Washington, N.H.) sounds atrociously rare, but it has happened before. In fact it was just back in 2009 I blogged about snow on June 1 -- which verified, along with upper 20s in Pennsylvania. I listed in my 2009 blog various (recent)* unusual occurrences of extreme cold, including that snow fell as late as June 11-17 in Maine, and up to 10 inches in New England May 26, 1967.

*The Little Ice Age & "Year Without a Summer" were disqualified due to their being over 100 years ago. Nobody reading this blog remembers that.