April 13th, 2011 Technical Discussion

Synopsis:

A low pressure system will continue to propagate to the northeast into New England today. Light and scattered rain showers will remain across much of the state on Wednesday. As the system continues to push off to the northeast, precipitation will gradually diminish west to east. A ridge of high pressure will provide pleasant weather for Thursday, but another system will bring more unsettled weather to the state as we head into the weekend.

Short-Term:

The low pressure system which brought a fair amount of precipitation to much of the state yesterday will move its way to the northeast today. A fair amount of cloud cover will blanket the state on Wednesday with temperatures generally in the 50s across much of the state. Temperatures may struggle to reach the 50s across the northern mountainous zones. Showers on Wednesday will be more of the scattered variety and will tapper off west to east throughout the course of the day. As Wednesday night rolls around, a few scattered light showers could be found across the extreme northeast corner of the state, but the rest of the state will see decreasing cloudiness overnight with temperatures generally in the 30s with 40s across the southeastern zones. A ridge of high pressure will move into the region Thursday and into early Friday morning. This will bring a fair amount of sunshine to the state on Thursday with many locations getting into the 60s. A few more clouds will move in Thursday night with temperatures generally in the 40s across the state. 

Long-Term:

There seems to be a fair amount of disagreement between the NAM and the GFS with the approach of our next rain maker this weekend. The NAM has been slowing the progression of this storm coming out of the midwest. In fact, it doesn't have the bulk of the precipitation reaching Pennsylvania until late in the afternoon on Saturday. The GFS has the precipitation getting here a little sooner with the onset of a majority of the precipitation coming Saturday morning into midday. The EURO also seems to agree with the GFS on the timing of the precipitation on Saturday, therefore we leaned towards the GFS in our forecast. Obvisouly, the timing of the precipitation will need to be monitored more closely by future shifts as we approaching the weekend. I know many, myself included, would like to see us have a dry weekend here in Happy Valley for Blue and White Weekend. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like it will happen.

Much of the state will try to dry out on Sunday as the system which will make its way through on Saturday moves off to the north and occludes. Therefore, we left a slight chance of precipitation in the forecast for Sunday across the northern zones of the state. Dry weather looks to kick off the start of the next work week.

~ Matt Alto ~