7:00 AM | ****Weekend accumulating snow, painful cold, dangerous sub-zero wind chills with potential damaging wind gusts past 55 mph****
Paul Dorian
6-Day Philly Forecast
Today
Mostly sunny, windy, bitter cold, highs in the upper teens with sub-zero wind chills
Tonight
Partly cloudy, winds die down rapidly to calm conditions, very cold, lows not far from 10 degrees
Saturday
Thickening clouds, becoming windy, cold, but not as extreme as today, snow developing during the afternoon hours, low 30’s
Saturday Night
Occasional snow, becoming extremely windy late, total snow accumulations of 1-3 inches by late, brutally cold, single digits for lows with sub-zero wind chills
Sunday
The coldest day of the year so far…painfully cold, extremely windy with dangerous sub-zero wind chills and potential damaging wind gusts past 55 mph, highs struggle to reach the lower teens
Monday
A bitter cold start near zero degrees or even slightly below, mostly sunny skies, breezy, still very cold during the afternoon with highs struggling to reach 20 degrees
Tuesday
Becoming cloudy, quite cold, snow possible late in the day or at night, low 30’s
Wednesday
Snow possible, windy, cold, low 30’s
Discussion
Arctic air has arrived and today promises to be a brutally cold day despite plenty of sunshine along with sub-zero wind chills as winds remain quite strong through much of the day. The winds will relax rapidly this evening, but before this Arctic air mass even has a chance to modify, another one will be fast-approaching as we begin the weekend. By late tomorrow, a clipper system and its associated Arctic front will be dropping southeastward across the Great Lakes region right towards the I-95 corridor. Snow will break out in the afternoon hours and continue at night with 1-3 inches likely by early Sunday.
This clipper low pressure system will explode off the Mid-Atlantic coastline late tomorrow and tomorrow night once it passes over the relatively warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. This explosive development will lead to a tremendously sharp pressure gradient which will lead to extreme wind gusts around here by late Saturday night and early Sunday on the order of 55 mph or higher. The last thing we need on Sunday - the coldest day of the year so far - is for power outages to develop, but that is definitely on the table for this event so prepare as well as possible. The cold on Sunday will be downright painful and the high winds will cause dangerously low sub-zero wind chill values. This rapidly intensifying storm will produce significant snow once again for New England, and in some ways it will actually be nastier than recent record-setting storms because of the extreme cold and wind that is expected.
Single digits are likely for lows around here on Sunday morning, highs will struggle on Sunday afternoon to even reach the teens, and then overnight low temperatures by early Monday morning could drop to 0 degrees or slightly below. Another accumulating snow threat will come late Tuesday into Wednesday, but that storm track is still uncertain and it could still end up not being a big problem around here. However, what is certain is that more brutal cold will follow by the middle and latter part of next week - perhaps even on the levels with this Sunday's extreme cold. And for some good news...pitchers and catchers report in just 6 days.
Video
httpv://youtu.be/OQtfYgMWr3I