Had enough winter?
After December going into the weather records as a mild month with temperatures some 8 degrees above normal, the La Nina weather pattern weakened and allowed occasional visits from the Polar Vortex and this resulted in January temperatures some 5 degrees below normal.
The cold along with several decent sized snows kept the winter scene alive and well across Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The climate scientist’s at the Climate Prediction Center tell us the La Nina weather pattern responsible for the mild December may once again be getting stronger and this should bring some milder days as we begin the month of February.
After days in the teens and 20s, some upper 30s and 40s are in the forecast this coming week and the new pattern should be welcome by most folks. Last week saw the actual air temperature in Uniontown around zero and in the mountains temperatures were near 5 degrees below zero.
No doubt the wind chill temperatures associated with these cold air masses made it feel a lot worse.
Wind chill is the result of the combination of the air temperature and the speed of the wind. A good rule of thumb is just to subtract the wind speed from the temperature and you get the wind chill reading. Wind chill was developed in the Korean War as a method to prepare soldiers for the effects of wind and temperatures. If we have an actual air temperature of 15 degrees and a wind of 15 mph the wind chill would be zero.
It is interesting to note that even though a wind chill temperature is well below freezing, if the air temperature is above freezing water will not freeze. An example is with the air temperature at 35 with a 15-mile-per-hour wind producing a wind chill of 20 degrees, still, water simply will not freeze.
Exposure to cold is called Hypothermia which means too much cold. The people at the CDC tells us that some 800 people in our country die each year from the cold and about 600 die from heat which is called Hyperthermia or too much heat.
It is also interesting that 4,000 of us drown each year, 35,000 die from falls. Auto accidents claim 36,000 each year and last year Covid took away over 800,000 American lives. No doubt the weather plays a role in many of these deaths; the exception being Covid.
So where do we go from here?
Wednesday was Groundhog Day which in Western Pennsylvania is almost a holiday. When winter starts to wear us down we look forward to the weather forecast from our furry friend. Rumor had it that Phil may have installed a heater in his borrow to ward off the effects of the Polar Vortex cold and wind as he ages, and to get him ready for his annual forecast.
There are also a lot of imposters showing up to grab some of the spotlight but Punxsutawney Phil is the most famous of the groundhogs and the tradition goes back to 1887.
In our area, February temperatures average 21 for the low and 38 for the high on the first day of February and by the 28th they are 38 for the low and 47 for the high. Sunlight increases form 7:30 a.m. and 5:38 p.m. on the first to 6:56 a.m. and 6:10 p.m. at month’s end.
In Uniontown it’s been as cold as 22 below and as warm as 77 degrees in February. Snowfall averages 8 inches and we can expect the sun to shine 36% of the time, up from 32% in January and just 28% in December.