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Monday, April 10, 2000
April showers bring more than flowers
By Christina Hall
Staff Writer
A surprise snowstorm dumped 4 inches on the region and sent howling winds knocking down trees and utility lines.
The good news is we got about 4 inches of snow.
The bad news is school's still scheduled for today.
Schizophrenic spring swept snow into the Bucks and Eastern Montgomery County areas Sunday, bringing high winds and below-freezing temperatures.
But Saturday's taste of summer melted the snow too fast to create major hang-ups on area roads and delays for schoolchildren. Even the budding trees and flowers will survive _thanks to the snow.
"You might find burning (browning) on some leaves ... but you won't see anything in a month," said Paul Faulkner, garden center manager with Bucks Country Gardeners Ltd. in Plumstead Township. "Every plant has secondary buds that re-foliate. The early bloomers dropped some flowers but the bulb plants will pick up."
Area gardening experts say that's because the snow provides insulation for the flowers by keeping the ground temperature from going much below freezing.
While the snow helped the foliage, it hindered driving, causing minor accidents, such as one in Bedminster Township in which a sport-utility vehicle went off a slippery, snow-covered Irish Meetinghouse Road and hit a utility pole guide wire. Like many of the crashes, there were no injuries.
The storm, which hit early Sunday morning, could have been much more dangerous if the roads had been jammed with commuters. Even so, at one point Sunday morning, police were dealing with five accidents on one stretch of I-95 near Philadelphia.
| Dr. Richard Hanauer, a local weather spotter who lives in Buckingham, has been taking weather measurements for 27 years; 10 of those years he's volunteered information to the National Weather Service. |
David Yaroschuk heard a thud at his father's home at 120 W. Oakland Ave. in Doylestown when he woke up about 6:30 a.m. His fiancee, Jeanne Dager, heard the loud crash.
A flowering maple tree fell onto the roof of the two-story house, punching holes in the attic and cracking the chimney. The tree also popped off the top of the chimney at the neighboring house, causing the chimney top to roll onto a car and damage it.
"It didn't come all the way through (the house)," said Yaroschuk, who's lived at the nearly 100-year-old house for 18 years. "The branches snapped, slowing the fall of the tree ... It's resting comfortably on top of the house."
Yaroschuk said Doylestown would bring in a crane to remove the tree, which pulled up roots and concrete near the street.
A tree also fell on a car at Overlook Avenue and another landed on a van at York Road in Upper Moreland, police said. No one was injured.
Other fallen trees blocked Lookout Lane in Upper Moreland and Pine Road between Red Lion Road and Philmont Avenue in Lower Moreland, police officials said.
A falling tree brought down utility wires on East Court Street in Doylestown and closed that road for about two hours. The area of Alden and Fetters Mill roads in the Morelands was shut down when a tree landed on power lines, leaving residents without electricity early Sunday morning.
Michael Wood, a Peco Energy Co. spokesman, said about 7,500 Bucks County residents and 8,000 Montgomery County residents were without power early Sunday. Only 200 remained without service Sunday night.
Nick Cimino, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, N.J., said Furlong in Bucks County received about 4.2 inches of snow while Montgomery County received 3 to 4 inches.
The storm dumped as much as 63/4 inches of heavy, wet snow on the higher elevations in northern and central Pennsylvania, with one to three inches in the valleys.
But it was no record storm. The record snowfall in Philadelphia for April 9 was 7 inches in 1917. The latest date the region received snow was on April 27 in 1967 when the area received one-tenth of an inch.
Bill Christ, another meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said a very cold blast of air from Canada plunged into the United States causing the "unusual" snowfall in the area. The last spring snowfall in the region was only a dusting during April 1998, he said.
"It's certainly not unprecedented. In the central and northern mountains, there's usually snow in April. This storm occurred farther south and east than normal," said meteorologist Gerald Mohler at Accuweather, a private forecasting service in State College.
Dr. Richard Hanauer, a local weather spotter who lives in Buckingham, has been taking weather measurements for 27 years; 10 of those years he's volunteered information to the National Weather Service.
"I kept an eye on top of it and checked the Internet," Hanauer said. "I knew something was coming, but I wasn't counting on 4 inches."
Hanauer has reported snow in Central Bucks as late as April 23, when 2.1 inches fell in 1986.
With the blast of winter, typical springtime activities were left in the cold on Sunday.
Joann Flower, owner of the Dairy Queen in Horsham, said the snowy weather put a damper on sales for the afternoon.
On a typical spring afternoon, the store serves about 300 customers. Flower estimated serving one-fifth that amount on Sunday.
"It affected us drastically," Flower said. "Usually with baseball practices and other stuff, we have a good number of customers."
Flower said she cut the night staff in half and was thinking about closing early. The store is open year-round, but Flower said the store was last closed due to weather during Hurricane Floyd in September.
Marvin Syracuse, the afternoon manager at Philmont Country Club in Huntingdon Valley, said the club's golf courses were closed to members for the day.
Syracuse said about 175 members came to the club on Saturday for golf and lunch but less than half showed for lunch on Sunday.
"People came to the club and saw the golf course was blanketed with snow," Syracuse said. "So, it was closed."
The inclement weather also cancelled an MS Walk at Nockamixon State Park and a bass-fishing tournament there.
Staff Writer Melissa Milewski and The Associated Press contributed to this report.