Return to main weather page
Monday, February 13, 2006
Winter Weekend Wallop
By: BRIAN CALLAWAY
A doozy of a winter storm slogged through the area Saturday night and Sunday, unloading more snow than expected on parts of the region.
The storm put an exclamation point on cold weather's comeback after an unseasonably warm January, which had some area residents cheering.
"Love it," said Doylestown's Brian Vail as he waited to slide down a toboggan-congested hill by the Mercer Museum Sunday afternoon.
He added that he's been "kind of bummed out, actually," that the season has been relatively light on snow thus far.
Others were a little more restrained.
"I love it for about a day or two days," said Kevin King, who was about two hours into shoveling at his Harvey Avenue home in Doylestown. "Then I wish it would all disappear."
Given the amount of snow that fell, though, it could take more than a day or two for his wish to come true.
Forecasters had predicted no more than 13 inches of snow would fall, but the storm stalled over some parts of Bucks, Montgomery and Chester counties, according to the National Weather Service.
While places such as Doylestown, with 13 inches, stayed true to expectations, others towns surpassed the forecast. Residents in Willow Grove, for instance, were digging out from 18.5 inches of snow.
Richard Hanauer, a weather enthusiast who collects information for the National Weather Service, said it can be difficult to accurately forecast how such storms will play out.
"It was a lot more intense than they had said," he said of the weekend storm. "You cannot predict that accurately because the structures of them are different every time."
Hanauer measured approximately 17 inches of snow at his home in Furlong on Sunday.
He said that's the sixth-largest snowfall he's recorded there since he began spotting for the federal weather agency in the 1970s. For the record, the monster storm that hit in January 1996 topped his list. He measured more than 21 inches of snow then.
This weekend's storm spurred the cancellation of church services and community activities throughout the region Sunday and created some hairy driving conditions for those who did venture away from home.
Officials said spin-outs and fender benders were as bad as most traffic accidents got, though.
"There was nothing major," said Kathy Koszarek, a police radio coordinator in Bucks County. "With it happening on Sunday, it was a good thing."
Charles Metzger, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, agreed that the storm's timing reduced problems.
"This storm hit at the perfect time for us, on a weekend, mostly overnight," he said.
About 400 PennDOT trucks were clearing state roads over the weekend. Most streets were largely snow-free by Sunday afternoon, Metzger said, but crews were expected to continue working through the night to make sure snow and ice stay off roads for this morning's commute.
Meanwhile, approximately 33,000 Peco customers lost power because of the storm, corporate spokesman Cameron Kline said. That's only about 2 percent of the power company's 1.6 million customers in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
"Considering what we went through, it's a good thing," he said.
While the area saw warm weather over the past month, with temperatures reaching above 60 degrees in January, they plunged below freezing during the weekend's storm. National Weather Service meteorologist Dean Iovino said daytime temperatures should stay in the 30s over the next day or two, then rebound somewhat into the 40s Wednesday and Thursday.
Residents like Vail plan to enjoy the winter weather while it's here.
Sunday, he watched his wife take their 3-year-old daughter, Alexa, on her first toboggan ride outside the Mercer.
"That was pretty cool," he said. "She likes the beach a lot more than she likes the cold, but she's getting used to it."
Another ride or two later, though, and Alexa was done.
"She got cold," Vail said as the family prepared to leave.
Enough snow for one day.
Brian Callaway can be reached at (215) 345-3060 or bcallaway@phillyBurbs.com.
Article's URL: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-02132006-611890.html
