PA: More Flooding, Storms, Snow Over the Rainbow

"If you don't like the weather in New England, wait a few minutes." This quote attributed to Mark Twain might as well be adopted by us in Pennsylvania this week. We got extremely heavy rainfall yesterday here State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map].

The amateur weather station that I installed here measured 0.75" in 15 minutes, causing flash flooding in locations that normally don't flood, like my driveway, shown above (also possibly at fault: drains clogged with fall leaves, though not in my neighborhood).

Then later that day while I was making dinner, I raised the living room blinds and was treated to a beautiful double rainbow!

Yet yesterday and today, the talk of the Operations Floor here at AccuWeather involves the "S-Word" for our state this weekend! Unfortunately I will be traveling and will miss it (maybe the cat-sitter will take a picture for me). Complete information is available in our news story; the map below will not automatically update this weekend.

If it were to snow this weekend in Happy Valley, it might beat the record earliest "trace" of snowfall, which, as far as I could tell from internal AccuWeather records, was on October 2, 2003. Of course, who can forget the 4.7" of snow that we got on October 15, 2009 -- the record earliest significant snowfall here. But hey, we had awesome thunderstorms here this time last year (and may today in the eastern part of the state). It's October.

You can see all my photos from Tuesday here. The rain and (maybe) snow will be caused by a pesky upper-level low pressure system that's been over the Northeast quadrant of the country for many days. Below is a visible satellite animation of the circulation of the system yesterday in Michigan. Severe thunderstorms are also possible in the eastern half of the state today.