First Snow: It happens (almost) every year
Arctic air is spilling across the country, and the Philly region is next. That first inch of snow might arrive this week, but it’s no sure thing.
For the region's legion of snow-lovers, cold without snow is an empty experience.
The cold is a certainty. Arctic air is spilling across the country, and we're next. The National Weather Service is saying temperatures won't hit 30 from 7 p.m. Thursday to 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Two coastal storms are due to come tantalizingly close, perhaps close enough to throw back an inch of snow atop Philadelphia early Friday, and another dose during the weekend.
Arbitrarily, we'll say that an inch would constitute the first real snow of the season. Technically, the seasonal total stands at 0.3 inches, spread over two snowfalls last month (oh, you say you missed them?).
And given what hasn't happened so far, we suspect that the drumbeats could exceed the actual threats. No doubt we will hear staggering figures about salt tonnages that won't necessarily be meaningful to the average motorist.
Occurring before a winter jade has a chance to ripen, those first snows hold special places; viewed more like confetti than ice crystals.
Snow is capricious. The concepts of "normal" and "average" are almost comical, given the extraordinary variability of annual totals, which range from nothing to 76.7 inches in Philadelphia.
That variability is nothing new: Mining 17th century journalists, the historian of late weather cites ample evidence that year-to-year winter caprice was very much a part of colonial life.
We remind our readers that for whatever reasons, the cold and the storms simply have failed to conspire through entire seasons.
We count five cases in records dating to 1885 in which less than an inch was measured officially in Philadelphia through all of January – 1933-34, 1949-50, 1972-73 (trace through the entire season), 1994-95, and 1997-98 (0.8 for season).
It is likely that the region will have seen at least some snowflakes by day's end Saturday, but don't be surprised if the snow-lovers have to endure another empty experience.