Nice today….better tomorrow! That’s how the weather is going to be described over the next few days!
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Stairway to Safety It is almost severe weather season here in the Alleghenies and with that… the risk of tornadoes. When doing school visits, I always get asked where the best place to be during a tornado would be. I give them the usual answer of ‘the basement.’ Another good answer would be [...]  Earth Hour - March 27, 2010 In case you missed it, Earth Hour took place on Saturday, March 27, 2010. Earth Hour is when everybody is asked to turn out their lights for one hour from 8:30 PM until 9:30 PM. The timing is dependent on where you are. The lights went out in Johnstown at 8:30 PM and three hours later, they went out in Vegas. Well, they didn’t turn out all of the lights. I had the opportunity to be in Las Vegas over the weekend and got to see a rare sight… all the major hotels killed their exterior lights for Earth Hour. At 9:30 PM, they all turned right back on.  New York, New York Casino During Earth Hour It was kinda cool because I came out of the New York, New York Casino and everyone was talking about it. Nobody seemed to know why the lights were out. Occasionally, you’d hear somebody mention the event. The picture to the left is of the actual casino and their big video screen in the dark. Are you interested in learning more about Earth Hour? If so, check out the link by clicking here. We’ll take you over to the Earth Hour website. I’ve posted a YouTube video after the jump from the Earth Hour group. Could it be true? Well, for some, yes.
Spring Brings Flowers Let me welcome everybody to the first day of spring. Spring officially started yesterday at 1:32 PM here on the east coast and we’re experiencing some fantastic spring-like weather. Temperatures today actually hit 70° for the first time this year in some parts of the region. Let’s talk about some [...] Here’s a look back at the last few St. Patrick’s Days, and it may be different than you think: Check out this really cool time-lapse video of THON 2010 by Maxwell Kruger.
Severe Weather Awareness Week It’s that time of year… Severe Weather Awareness Week! Every year the National Weather Service puts out a public statement telling the general public what to do in severe weather. They cover everything from lightning to tornadoes to flooding. Here’s the rundown for this week’s topics: Monday: Tornadoes Tuesday: [...]  Flooding - Courtesy: Ron Penrod It was a wet weekend across the Alleghenies and some of us picked up over 2 inches of rain between Friday and Sunday. The bulk of the rain fell on Saturday, as expected. Some of the hardest hit areas were in Somerset County as residents in Holsopple were evacuated on Saturday due to the rising waters. The returned home Sunday to start the clean-up. It wasn’t all bad as some actually went kayaking in the ocean-like waters of the Stonycreek River near Greenhouse Park in Somerset County. So how much rain did we pick up? Have a look below at some of the totals. These come from the NWS Public Information Statement released Sunday at 2 PM. Bedford County Buffalo Mills – 2.32″ Blair County Altoona – 2.58″ Cambria County Belmont – 1.09″ Cameron County Stevenson Dam – 1.71″ Centre County State College – 2.13″ Clinton County Lock Haven – 1.57″ Somerset County Meyersdale – 2.30″ Our rivers and streams across the Alleghenies crested early Sunday morning. Have a look at some of the final crests for some of the places we were watching. While our rainstorm this past weekend was significant, it fell short of what was predicted in many areas. That was certainly a good thing, as the flooding was not widespread. Take a look at some of our totals:
We’ll dry out completely on Tuesday, with increasing amounts of sunshine. Plenty of [...]  Rt. 281 into Confluence I would have loved to do a live stream today, but the cards just didn’t fall into place. Sorry. However, we did get several pictures from the flooding event across the Alleghenies. I’ll share a couple of them for you on here. As of 9:00 PM on Saturday, rain totals look like this: Altoona – 1.5″ The storm is still expected to bring more rain (albeit lighter) through the day on Sunday and into Monday before coming to an end. Rivers are expected to crests in flood stage across the region early Sunday morning. Some rivers will be into moderate or even major flood stage by the time all is said and done. At the time of this post, rivers currently at flood or action stage include the Conemaugh River at Seward and the Youghiogheny River at Confluence. The Frankstown Branch of the Juniata and the Aughwick Creek at Shirleysburg are also at action or flood stage and expected to rise overnight. We’ll get a better idea and updated information after 10 PM at the AHPS River Forecasts website (which is currently down due to server issues). In the meantime, you can get more river information by clicking on either of these links. One has information for rivers in the area covered by NWS Pittsburgh and one is for NWS State College. http://bit.ly/dwCyDi and http://bit.ly/bsyWgW It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since the Blizzard of ’93. I was a kid (10 years old) in Pittsburgh at the time and can remember making snow tunnels and going out with my dad as he plowed driveways. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, even though we were off school for a while because of it. Enter 2010. We have a snowstorm on February 5th and 6th that drops 24-36 inches of snow across parts of our region. Now, I’m driving and have a job. I have to shovel all of the snow off of my driveway. Now I understand the big deal! The Blizzard of ’93 happened on March 12-14 (give or take) and dropped a lot of snow with blowing winds across record-cold temperatures. It also caused many deaths up and down the east coast. All signs are pointing to a heavy rain event for the Alleghenies, starting later Friday into Saturday. There’s a few changes in the thinking from last night, but the overall theme remains the same. The steadiest and heaviest of the rain looks to fall on Saturday. Right now, amounts appear to be on the order of an inch to an inch and a half. If we see rainfall amounts over 1.5 [...] It’s hard to believe that we’re already talking tornadoes… but we are. Yesterday, there was severe weather in Oklahoma that caused a tornado that took out several houses. I found this video at MSNBC.com.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking [...] There’s still quite a bit of snow on the ground in the Laurel Highlands, and that has the potential to pose some problems later this week. Check out the snowmap below, courtesy of the NWS in State College. Take note of the tremendous snowfall at Laurel Summit in Somerset County: We’ll get a nice break this weekend and early next week, but winter is not over yet. We still have a high potential for more storms through the end [...] For the southern half of Pennsylvania, February was an exceptional month as far as snowfall was concerned. Not just here in the Alleghenies, but also eastward to Harrisburg and Philly. It started last weekend when I came in to the Severe Weather Center and had a phone message from a lady asking about a storm on March 7th. (Keep in mind, this was February 20th!) I didn’t hear much about it again through the week until Saturday and Sunday when people started to ask me about it again. Where is this all coming from? Really, it stems from one guy… Lester Moyer. I’m not going to speak ill of the guy because I don’t know him. Here’s what I do know after reading several articles about him…
Let’s examine the above one-by-one… |
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