Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Chilling Out
Dan Stillman @ 2:00 AM
Tomorrow morning will feel quite raw compared to yesterday's highs of 63 at Reagan National, 63 at Dulles, and 59 at BWI. Richmond was really basking in the warmth, maxing out at 70.
Despite cloudy skies, temps in the D.C. area will get back into the low-to-mid 50s today. We'll stay dry until lunchtime, then all bets are off as low pressure passes almost directly over Washington. Showers this afternoon and tonight will usher in noticeably cooler air, with temps in the upper 30s to near 40 by wake-up time tomorrow.
As low pressure energizes off the Delaware/New Jersey coast tomorrow, enough cold air could be pulled southward at the upper levels to give us a little bit of wet snow as the precipitation ends in the morning (chances for snow are better to the north and east, in northern Anne Arundel County and toward Baltimore). Not to worry though as surface temperatures will remain above freezing. Yet again, the real fun will take place further up the Northeast corridor.
Temps will hold steady in the upper 30s to low 40s during the day tomorrow with lingering clouds. Windy and cold tomorrow night with lows in the 20s and clearing skies, and remaining cool but seasonal on Friday with highs in the low-to-mid 40s. Watch for a nice warming trend over the weekend as sunshine boosts temps back toward 50.
Weekend Bias?
Jeremy from Northwest, D.C., wonders why it always seems to snow on the weekend. Jeremy's curiosity prompted me to do a bit of
research (OK, so maybe I was already thinking about this myself, and *maybe* I was nerdy enough to start looking into this even before Jeremy asked). The graphic above shows the amount of snow at Reagan National by day of the week since Jan. 1, 2000. The y-axis, and numbers above each bar, indicate the total number of inches of snow. The numbers inside each bar are the number of times at least 0.1 inches of snow was recorded. It turns out the weekend is a mixed bag. Eight snow events for a total of 8.6 inches on Saturday is none too impressive, but Sunday hits the jackpot with a total of 27.8 inches -- more than any other day -- from nine events (the majority, 13.3 inches, coming from the President's Day Weekend storm of 2003). But Thursday's 20.2 inches, also from nine events, isn't far behind. So Jeremy, it's not your imagination that we've gotten quite a bit of snow on weekends. But the numbers hardly seem statistically significant. What I do notice is that we are long overdue for a Wednesday wallop.
A couple of final notes ...
Just because it's winter doesn't mean you shouldn't be concerned about air quality. Check in with our friends at UMBC's Smog Blog, which has paid special attention to the Baltimore-Washington area during the past couple of days.
And did anyone catch Channel 4 meteorologist Veronica Johnson Sunday night? I'm not talking about her weather forecast, rather her appearance as host of "America This Week." From what I could gather before I quickly changed channels, the show is a local, somewhat boring newsmagazine of sorts. Apparently, it usually airs on Sunday mornings at 5:30 a.m. (I don't plan to ever confirm that with my own eyes), but for some reason was shown Sunday night following a shortened newscast. No offense to Veronica (a friend of ours here at CapitalWeather.com), who seemed to be doing her best to inject some life into the show, but I think the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning might just be the right time slot for this program.
Picture courtesy NBC4
Comments are closed for this archived entry | Link | 
Email this post
Email this post
