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April showers bring colder temperatures and even snow

By Mark Hofmann mhofmann@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Mid-April has continued on the roller-coaster ride of weather from summer highs to freezing lows and this week will be no different with snow in the forecast of a mostly cold week.

“The 80 degrees was a three-day fluke from the lower temperatures we’ve been seeing,” said Evan Bookbinder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service out of Pittsburgh of the sunny, warm weekend that ended Sunday night with colder temperatures and a long stretch of rain.

Bookbinder said since the rain started on Sunday, Fayette County had rainfall ranging from 1 inch to 2.67 inches of rainfall into Monday, and the Mon Valley area saw 1 inch to 2.25 inches of rain in that time period.

Bookbinder said it was record rainfall for Pittsburgh for that time period as it never has gone over 1 inch. Even though the National Weather Service issued some flood warnings for the more flood-prone areas, the service did not receive any reports of major flooding.

“The rain spread over a 12-14-hour period,” said Bookbinder.

He added that the seven-day period of dry weather also helped with water absorption in the ground as well as budding trees taking in more moisture.

“We didn’t have that with the previous season,” he said. “It’s been pretty quiet.”

A supervisor with Westmoreland County 911 said there was nothing significant to report on Monday other than the normal reports that come with heavy rain.

In Washington County, officials said a few incidents in the morning included a tree down in California Borough, wires down near Union Township and one call of a woman briefly stuck in her car near a flood-prone roadway in Amwell Township. She was rescued without sustaining any injuries.

In Fayette County, Susan Griffith, the public information officer for Fayette County Emergency Management Agency, said the area also had typical heavy-rain calls with nothing significant other than one call of a landslide blocking Naomi Road in Washington Township.

Monday afternoon, the state Department Transportation announced that a section Route 906 between State Street and Route 201 in the township was closed and detoured because falling rocks and debris presented safety concerns for motorists.

According to PennDOT spokeswoman Valerie Petersen, that section of road will remain closed until the area can be fully assessed and repaired.

A detour is in place that uses Interstate 70 and Route 201, Petersen said.

If the rain wasn’t enough to dampen spirits, Bookbinder said it is expected to mix with snow into Tuesday morning when snow will be the only precipitation expected.

The good news: Bookbinder said he doesn’t expect any accumulation as the sun will melt anything that falls fairly quickly.

The bad news: Bookbinder said the area will experience a running cold stretch for the first few days of the week as the average for this time of year is normally in the low 60s.

“We’ll be 10 to 15 degrees below normal lows and 20 to 25 degrees below on the normal higher temperatures,” Bookbinder said, adding that such temperatures are “pretty remarkable” for mid April, but not record-setting territory as the area has even experienced the rare snowfall in May.

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