Storm confounded forecasters

As Gene Toth was watching the radar screen in the office, it occurred to him that he didn't need a weatherman to tell him something was drastically wrong with the forecast.

Like almost everyone else in the region, Toth, the roads chief in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, was expecting perhaps a generic couple of inches of snow Tuesday night.

But it was snowing - and hard - and the radar screen showed nothing but stubborn images of snow to him and his colleagues. "As we're watching the radar, we were saying among ourselves, it isn't going to go anywhere," he said.

He decided he better call in the plow cavalry to work through the night to fight what officially became the biggest - and unofficially the strangest - snowfall in three years.

It layered parts of the region with up to 10 inches of snow, piled ice on some back streets that might linger for days, closed Philadelphia schools yet again, and gave meteorologists another lesson in humility.

And it was ever-capricious.

The snow started falling with a thunderstorm-like vigor after dark Tuesday over a relatively narrow corridor spanning Chester, Montgomery, Delaware and Gloucester Counties, and slicing through part of the city. And by the time it ended, more than eight inches was measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport, yet only one in Wilmington.

By morning, hundreds of schools had decided to close or open late, as they had done last week; roadside trees thickly tufted with snow were transformed into white archways; and road crews were playing catch-up with nature.

Temperatures today aren't expected to get out of the 20s, and another hard freeze is due overnight. So any leftover slush and ice is apt to hang around through the work week.

Mayor Nutter said yesterday that about 40 percent of the city's streets had been cleared. He also warned that, given Philadelphia's dire budget situation, it might take a while before city crews got to some of the side streets.

"We have a severe financial challenge," he said on a radio program yesterday morning, "and I know that on many of those smaller streets, it may be a challenge for neighbors."

Anticipating only a few inches of snow, road crews throughout the region were having a hard time believing what they were seeing Tuesday night.

"We were expecting four at the most," said Mike Micklasavage, superintendent of public works in Harrison Township, Gloucester County, where 10 inches was reported. "But it was snowing over an inch an hour from 11 at night until 2 a.m."

Toth said his expectations were based on the township's private forecast and the TV consensus. Yet even early in the day, he sensed a volatility in the forecasts, so he e-mailed his crews to be on alert. As the snow continued, he ordered the 13 operating plows to keep working and called in seven more.

The snow band evidently hammered the International Airport, where runways had to be shut down briefly for clearing and almost 200 passengers had to spend the night, said airport spokeswoman Phyllis VanIstendal, who commuted to work from an unplowed street in the city's Pennsport section.

At the snow's peak, visibility dropped to zero at the airport, the National Weather Service reported. In all, about 40 flights in and out of the airport were canceled yesterday morning, VanIstendal said.

As it became clear that the snow assault would continue, the National Weather Service issued a winter-storm warning for Philadelphia about 9:30 p.m.

"I probably didn't act fast enough to ramp up the forecast," said Tony Gigi, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service forecast station in Mount Holly, who was on duty Tuesday night.

What went wrong? For days, the computer models that forecasters rely upon had called for the potential of a major coastal storm this week. The storm formed, but it passed offshore, and the snow was set off by another system in the upper atmosphere that moved across the region.

The atmosphere was extremely unstable, meteorologists said, meaning the air higher up was much colder than air near the surface. Snow falls when warmer air rises over colder; heavy snow falls when very cold air lifts it in a hurry.

On Tuesday, computer guidance saw a potential for isolated heavy snows, but couldn't pinpoint where. At least one meteorologist, Rob Guarino, a former Philadelphia TV weatherman, had noted on his daily blog that hefty snow amounts were possible near Philadelphia.

A similar band set up near Lancaster. In Manheim Borough, no measurable snow was observed; in Manheim Township, seven miles away, a foot fell. Such a feature is all but impossible for a computer model to pinpoint, said Mike Deangelo, a weather service meteorologist in the State College office, which covers Lancaster.

The region did get a huge break with the timing of the storm. Had the heavy snow begun four hours sooner - or later - it might have resulted in a commuting nightmare.

In fact, Upper Darby Director of Public Works Fernando Baldivieso called it the perfect storm. And, he meant that in the good way - the worst of it happening at a time of light traffic.

"We had every single street opened by 6 a.m. this morning," Baldivieso said yesterday.

The situation in Philadelphia was a bit different.

A mix of packed snow and slush lined 11th Street in front of Epiphany of Our Lord Church in South Philadelphia, where Richard Graham, 60, was shoveling the steps and sidewalks.

He said he started at 4:30 a.m., and during the six hours he'd been at it, "All I've seen is just trash trucks. No plows, no salters, nothing."

Joe Barbella, 62, who was clearing off his Ford Expedition at Eighth Street near Porter Street, was more sympathetic. "The city's in enough trouble," he said. "They gonna plow the streets, too?

"This ain't Wyoming."

Nasir McCleary, 14, of Paulsboro, Gloucester County, did not see the snow as a bad thing at all. He got the day off from school, and decided to use his time wisely, and profitably. The weather was a gift to students in many Gloucester County schools. He and Octavia Garland, 9, had teamed up to make $60 by noon by shoveling snow.

McCleary, who goes to Paulsboro High School, said he'd been awake late into Tuesday night, playing in the snow with his parents as it piled up.

"Once it got to, like, six inches, I knew school would be out," he said. "I got up at 5:30 this morning and started going door to door."

Even for the weather people, the storm and its frustrations weren't all bad.

Said Gigi: "We still have a job, because the models don't get it right."