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<title>Wearecentralpa.com Stormtracker Weather Feed</title>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/</link>
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<title><![CDATA[Your WTAJ Stormtracker Forecast]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[ Tuesday, Feb.9th<br>]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 9 Feb 2010 07:39:52 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=67711</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=67711</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Joe Murgo - Weather Page]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Joe MurgoJoe is WTAJ&#39;s Chief Meterorologist and you can catch him weekdays at 5PM, 5:30PM, 6PM and 11PM.Read More About Joe]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:23:45 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57962</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57962</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Regina Miller - Weather]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Regina MillerRegina works as the morning and noon meteorologist weekdays on WTAJ.Read More About Regina]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:23:28 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57982</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57982</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Brian Thompson - Weather]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Brian ThompsonYou can catch Brian on the weekend editions of WTAJ News at 6 &amp; 11pm.Read More About Brian]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:23:12 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57992</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=57992</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Visit the Stormtracker Weather Blog!]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Visit the Stormtracker Weather Blog for much more from the Stormtracker Team.]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:21:06 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=138611</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=138611</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Snow Can Be Stubborn To Leave]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[



You probably noticed today that it&rsquo;s real hard to melt snow
on still days like today, even with sunshine and temperatures reaching the
lower 40s. The reason why has to do with what we refer to the transfer of
latent heat. When water shifts phases it either absorbs or releases energy. When
water evaporates, it&rsquo;s takes a lot of energy which comes from the surrounding
environment. This causes a cooling effect and is the reason why you feel chilly
when you step out of the shower. The opposite is true about condensation, which
is why the formation of fog slows the cooling at night.

&nbsp;

It also takes a good amount of energy for melting to occur.
In fact it takes about 60 times then energy to melt a gram of ice as it would
to warm the same amount water one degree Celsius. Therefore, as the snow starts
to melt, it starts to cool the air near the snow. With little influence of
wind, the melting actually creates a layer of cool air near the snow. On top of
that, it was a dry day and as soon as any snow melting, it started to
evaporate. It takes even more energy for the evaporation to occur and creates
and even larger cooler effect. 

&nbsp;

So if you are a snow lover or a skier, you like these dry
warm ups. What eats the snow quickly? Temperatures above freezing with rain
and/or wind. Fog with temperatures in the mid 30s can melt snow faster than a
dry day in the lower 40s. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:43:41 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=142612</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=142612</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Wintercast 2008]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[WTAJ Meteorologist Joe Murgo predicts the weather for this upcoming winter season.Get a Sneak-Peak at what winter will be like.Do you think it will be...Cold? Wet? Mild? Severe? Icy? Snowy?&nbsp; Check it Out.]]></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 6 Jan 2010 09:33:45 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=40831</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=40831</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[today forecast]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Today's Weather]]></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 6 Jan 2010 09:32:26 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=55</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=55</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Wintercast 2009-10]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Chief Meteorologist Joe Murgo tells us what we can expect for the winter ahead with his annual Wintercast.]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:09:28 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132531</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132531</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[We Crossed an Important Milestone Today]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[At least for me. It&#39;s more of a personal psychological pick me up. As you may have picked up on before, I&#39;m the exact opposite than Brian Thompson. While I don&#39;t dread cold and winter, I really don&#39;t like the darkness that lies as the root cause. And today is an important day for me marks the date of which the sunset gets later. That&#39;s right, even though we haven&#39;t reached the solstice, sunsets have started to get later. And since I am more of an evening person, it means more to have a later sunset. In our mid-latitude region the earliest sunset of the year comes two weeks before the winter solstice and the year&#39;s latest sunrise comes two weeks after. The reason is a difficult one to explain.&nbsp; But if I have peaked your interest, read on. There are actually two things that help to determine the local time of sunrise and sunset: the equation of time and the sun&rsquo;s declination. Let me start with the first. Believe it or not, a day is not always exactly 24 hours long. The equation of time is a way of describing this variation.&nbsp; The equation of time is defined as the difference between 12:00 noon on a clock and the actual time of when the sun reaches its peak across the exact center of the time zone. The length of the solar day varies considerably over the year. It is itself determined by two factors, both dependent on the position of the Earth in its orbit. From mid-November to early February these two factors work together to make the solar day longer than 24 hours. In late December, the actual solar day is as much as 30 seconds longer than 24 hours. Since we don&#39;t adjust our clocks for this effect, the Sun&#39;s transit moves later and later each day throughout this period. In other words, because the solar days are longer than our days, both the sunrise and sunset become a little bit later each day. This is part one to our answer. The other part has to do with what we call the sun&rsquo;s declination. This is what most people already understand about the equinoxes and seasons. This is the measure of how far above the horizon the sun reaches. During the winter solstice, the sun is at its lowest point in the sky, so we expect the sun to be above the horizon for the least amount of the day, giving us a longer night. Most of the year, this effect causes the largest day-to-day difference in the time of sunrise and sunset. However, thanks to the fact that the orbit of the Earth is not perfectly round, the day-to-day change within a couple of weeks of either side of the solstice drops to near zero. This means if we had a perfect 24-hour day, the sunrise and sunset would be virtually the same over this period. However, if we take the first factor into account, both sunrise and sunset near the winter solstice get close to 30 seconds later each day. This is why both are later in the period that you are describing. After January 6th, the declination starts to win out again and the sunrises begin to occur earlier, giving us longer periods between sunrise and sunset.If you are looking for enough sunshine to warm us until spring, you&#39;ll have to wait a while. The old saying is &quot;as the days lengthen, the cold strengthens&quot;. Usually our lowest average temperatures are in the middle to latter part of January. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:51:44 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=138162</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=138162</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[We Dodged A Few Bullets Last Week]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Some of you are probably wondering what could have been worse than what
we got last week.&nbsp; It was a pretty nasty stretch of weather with
several inches of snow Wednesday topped off with some sleet and rain.&nbsp;
And then, we had 48 hours of just brutal weather if you spent any
length of time outside.&nbsp; Temperatures were in the teens and 20s, with
winds between 20 and 40 MPH, making it feel like it was below zero at
times.&nbsp; So what could have been worse?&nbsp; These are both using the
assumption that you, the reader, don&#39;t like cold winter weather.&nbsp; If
you are a winter weather fan like me, then these are disappointments,
not bullets dodged.

First, the lack of lake-effect snow.&nbsp; Most times this time of year when
a fresh charge of very cold air moves into our area, we see heavy
lake-effect snows break out, which can pile up across the Laurel
Highands and areas up to the north and west.&nbsp; This time, we had very
little snow when the cold air arrived, with most places not even seeing
a new covering of snow.&nbsp; Well, it&#39;s not that there wasn&#39;t any
lake-effect snow -- it just wasn&#39;t in our area.&nbsp; Lake-effect snow sets
up shop in line with the wind direction.&nbsp; Pretty much everyone in our
area is located to the southeast of the Great Lakes, so in order to get
lake snows down here, we need a northwesterly wind to allow the bands
to set up from northwest to southeast and reach us.&nbsp; Despite how cold
the air felt over the past few days and how it seemed like the air had
to be coming straight from Canada, winds were actually westerly and
even west-southwesterly.&nbsp; This forced the lake snow bands to set up to
the east of the Lakes, which put the bulk of the snow from Lake Erie in
western New York, where they were measuring the snow in feet.&nbsp; Around
here?&nbsp; Simply flurries and a few snow showers that were mostly terrain
driven, which didn&#39;t add up to a whole lot.&nbsp; The difference between a
west wind and a northwest wind is subtle, but when you&#39;re talking about
lake-effect snow, subtle differences can have huge consequences.

Also, I can&#39;t believe I&#39;m going to say this since I stood out in it on
Wednesday morning, but the rain and warmer air that moved in Wednesday
may have saved us from some headaches.&nbsp; Even though the snow that fell
was wet and fairly heavy, the rain and melting followed by the
refreezing Wednesday night left us with an icy, crusty snowpack.&nbsp; It
acted like a natural cover over the snow that could have been blowing
around.&nbsp; I know some places did have blowing snow on Thursday with the
snow that fell then, but there wasn&#39;t much new snow to blow around.&nbsp; If
it had been a colder storm with 6-10 inches of a dry, powdery snow, we
would have been dealing with blowing and drifting snow over that 48
hour windy period we had from Wednesday night through Friday night.&nbsp;
Ground blizzards and low visibilities would have been common and
roadways in open areas would have gotten recovered in snow every few
hours due to the drifting.&nbsp; That is what people across the Midwest have
been dealing with over the past couple of days, and it was much colder
than what we had around here.

So, if you thought it was bad the last few days, it could have been much, much worse.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:02:53 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=137721</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=137721</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Arctic Air Will Be Added to the Mix]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[We've seen a couple of spells of colder air, but so far, we have not had anything that has been too harsh for this time of the year. The pattern has changed and each front over the next week will bring a little more of a harsh bite. Temperatures this weekend will be well below average and it will feel like winter. I'm still not sold on it staying well below average for the long haul yet, but the mild weather is done. And I'm still impressed with an even more impressive stretch of harsh weather later in the month.]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 1 Dec 2009 12:11:49 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=135931</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=135931</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[The Upcoming Cold Will Do Us Some Good]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[That's right. I'm looking forward to this little blast of cold later in the week and you should too. The colder air mass will be a drier and more dense air mass which will finally kick us out of this grey, damp, and drizzly pattern. So while the cold will be biting, and it will be accompanied by snow showers that may cause some travel problems Friday, it will help to bring us some peeks of sunshine for the second half of the weekend. 

And if you are not a fan of the cold, don't worry. It's not going to stick as of yet. I'm still looking for a longer lasting spell of harsh air coming in during December, but not until more toward the middle of the month.]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:48:44 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=135162</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=135162</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[It's Amazing What We Now Can See]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Modern technology is allowing us to see things that people 50 years ago never imagined that we can see. Here is a great link: http://nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail.php?MediaID=75&amp;MediaTypeID=2 It is a visualization of the entire 2008 hurricane season. It really highlights the activity of a season. Most notable is peak activity that occurs in September and Ike&#39;s trek along the tropics. Also, you can see the strengthening jet stream and how the switch is made heading into autumn. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:18:03 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=134382</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=134382</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Very Dry, Mild November Follows a Wet, Cold October ]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[The raindrops finally have started falling today, which will go down as
the first significant rainfall for most places in a few weeks.&nbsp; Up
through yesterday, there had been no measurable rain in Altoona since
last month, an impressive feat but not quite record-breaking.&nbsp; The
longest November dry streak on record is 21 days, which happened back
in 2001.&nbsp; I can hear the rain pounding on our roof, and I wouldn&#39;t be
surprised at all if we saw a half inch of rain or even an inch by day&#39;s
end.

It&#39;s been a truly remarkable change that has happened over the past
month and a half.&nbsp; Throughout the month of October, all we seemed to
talk about was how wet and cool it was.&nbsp; We wound up with over 6&quot; of
precipitation for the month of October, with some places seeing even
more than that.&nbsp; That is well above average, as October tends to be one
of our drier months.&nbsp; What October 2009 will be famous for is one of
the coldest stretches ever for the month, as highs for several days
only got into the 30s.&nbsp; The month as a whole turned out to be cooler
than average, thanks mostly to the above average precipitation.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp;
Because when we see a lot of precipitation, the ground has more
moisture in it.&nbsp; When the ground has more moisture, some of the sun&#39;s
energy has to go towards evaporating the moisture instead of just
heating the ground.

Then the calendar changed into November and the rain shut off.&nbsp; And,
with less rain, there is less moisture in the ground.&nbsp; So, with much
less moisture in the ground, more and more of the sun&#39;s rays go towards
heating the ground.&nbsp; The result is a climate somewhat similar to a
desert.&nbsp; When the sky is clear, the temperatures can be dramatically
different from morning to afternoon because the sunshine can warm the
ground very effeciently, while the lack of clouds at night allow all of
the heat absorbed by the ground during the day to radiate back into
space.&nbsp; Some of our nicest weather has been on the weekends, and that&#39;s
where those big temperature spreads have been.&nbsp; A few examples from
Altoona this month:

Saturday 11/7 -- High 60, Low 26&nbsp; (Spread = 34) 
Sunday 11/8 -- High 70, Low 39&nbsp; (Spread = 31)
Sunday 11/15 -- High 68, Low 37&nbsp; (Spread = 31)

These certainly aren&#39;t record spreads, but they are very impressive for
the month of November.&nbsp; Remember, we&#39;re only a month away from the
winter solstice and we&#39;ve only been seeing about 10 hours of daylight
each day.&nbsp; With that limited amount of sun, conditions really need to
be set up perfectly to get temperatures to rise that much during the
day after such a chilly morning. &nbsp;

Those days in the 60s and 70s may be behind us, though.&nbsp; Our computer
models continue to indicate that much colder air will start to move
back into the area by the end of next week, making Thanksgiving and the
following weekend feel much more like late November.
]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:47:38 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=134151</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=134151</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Things Missing This November]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[&nbsp;There are three things that have been missing this November, weather speaking of course. I know as you read this, you are sitting there saying, yeah, we&#39;re missing that November chill. And you are correct. And if you have been watching me, you probably already know about the second thing missing, and that is rain. It has been the driest start to November that I have ever seen. Places like Altoona have made it through the first 17 days without measurable rainfall. It makes for our longest November dry streak since 21 days in 2001. So what is the third thing missing? Have you figure it out yet? Once I say it, you are going to agree. It&#39;s the one that is also quite impressive for me. Okay, I guess I have stalled long enough to spill the beans. Wind. That brisk November wind has been lacking. Sure there has been a breeze on a couple of days, but the lack of strong cold fronts has caused a lack of days with strong winds. Temperature and pressure are linked which means temperature and winds are linked too. Therefore, the lack of any strong cold spells has slackened our winds for the month. &nbsp;I do expect the end of all three streaks within the next week to ten days. We&#39;ll have some rain showers Thursday and I expect a cold snap and some winds later Thanksgiving week. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:38:44 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=133672</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=133672</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks in the Next Day]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Every November, the Earth passes through a trail of dust left behind the comet Temple-Tuttle. Most of these particles are much smaller than a grain of sand, but the friction with the air of the atmosphere allows for them to heat tremendously. This heat creates the bright light of meteors, or shooting stars. This year, the show should be pretty good with an average peak of around 100 per hour expected early Tuesday morning. This means that you may see just over one per minute. Some high clouds will interfere with the show a bit.]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:56:47 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=133431</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=133431</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Don't Give Ida All of the Credit.]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[There has been a lot of devastation along the coast of Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey with coastal flooding and wind gusts approaching hurricane strength. The total damage may reach over a billion dollars and news reporters have flocked to the scenes to help show the damage. Since this system started as a tropical system, and was Tropical Storm Ida when it moved onshore in the southeast, the name has stuck. And the flooding rains from Mississippi to Virginia were directly related to this tropical system. Though the coastal flooding, the high winds, and the damage total would not be the same if it were from Ida alone. The fierce winds are a result in the pressure difference between that low and an area of high pressure to the north. The battle of this system has raged for a couple of days as they have been stubborn to move, but the high will shift to the east and things will start to calm over the weekend. And that is good news. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:27:04 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132981</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132981</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Sun, Dry Ground Responsible for Recent Indian Summer]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Many of you were pleasantly surprised over the past couple of days as we were treated to what was perhaps a final round of Indian Summer.&nbsp; We even approached record highs on Sunday and Monday, missing it by 2 degrees on Sunday and 4 on Monday.&nbsp; When we&#39;re that close to record temperatures, it means that several things are coming together to make it that warm or cold.]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:33:54 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132042</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=132042</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[The Darkest Time of the Year]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[No, I am not being philosophical or making any bad commentary about the
colder time of the year that is coming our way. What I am referring to
is the start of Solar Winter which started today and will then last
until the beginning of February. This marks the quarter of the winter
upon which the sun heats the northern hemisphere the least. It all
stems to the tilted axis of the Earth. As the Earth revolves around the
sun, there are times that the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the
sun. This creates a higher sun angle and allows the sun to better heat
the ground. It also marks the time of the year where the daylight hours
are at a maximum. There are also times when the northern hemisphere is
tilted away from the sun, creating a low sun angle, and even no sun for
the polar regions. This is our solar winter. During this time, the sun
is less effect and at a lower angle and the nights are long. It marks
the period when our half of the Earth loses more energy than we gain
and leads to a deepening cold. This is the true reason for the seasons.


Solar winter does not match up with the weather though as we do still
have winter weather after the end of solar winter in early February.&nbsp;
Though if you notice, things really do start to get brighter again
during February and our average temperatures start to rise. A response
to that good old sun. 
&nbsp;]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 5 Nov 2009 17:29:43 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=131101</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=131101</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Why I Hate Daylight Saving Time]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[One reason to have a blog is to spout opinions, so I&#39;m going to complain about Daylight Saving Time tonight.&nbsp; It seems stupid to do it tonight since we are actually gaining an hour this weekend, which makes it officially the longest weekend of the year, but I&#39;m going to do it anyway.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:25:24 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=129991</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=129991</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Closing Out October Snow-Free]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[It&#39;s pretty typical during the autumn months that we have spells where it&#39;s unusually warm and unusually cool.&nbsp; That&#39;s how it will be this again this week, although we are not looking at any big cool snaps over the next seven days.&nbsp; It appears that the snow we picked up last week on the 15th and 16th could be the only flakes we see this October, as any air mass cold enough to produce snow will not arrive until after the month ends this coming Saturday.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:58:29 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=128851</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=128851</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Weather Images]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Local Satellite/Radar &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

Local Watches/Warnings

Local Radar Loop&nbsp;

Regional Temperatures

High Temps - Past 24 Hours

Low Temps - Past 24 Hours]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:22:27 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=56</link>
<guid>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=56</guid>
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<title><![CDATA[Going Into the Hall of Fame]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[



Being a meteorologist and studying the weather for a long
period of time, there have been certain weather events that stand out as extraordinarily
impressive. In my mind, I have sort of a hall of fame of such for Central Pennsylvania. This weather pattern is definitely
going into my top five. 

&nbsp;

And no, I&rsquo;m not talking about the snow. While it has been
visually impressive to many, a darling to the media, and unfortunately, a
disaster to some who lost trees and power, it has only been a symptom to what I
am calling the impressive weather event. And that event is the strength of the
cold of this mid-October air mass. We are breaking, if not smashing, three or
four day&rsquo;s worth of record low high temperatures. I know that record is hard to
swallow at first glance, but an example that I am talking about is that our
high temperature in Altoona
was only 35 degrees. The previous lowest high temperature we had for the date
was 48 degrees. Breaking a record by such an amount says a lot to the
situation. We also set new records for Thursday and will likely for Saturday
and Sunday. 

&nbsp;

So what brought this hall of famer cold snap? Well it was a
perfect combination of just the right things. We had a series of snow events
that briefly brought snow covers to a good portion of Central Canada and the
Northern Plains of the United
  States. After that happened, a trough in the
jet stream ushered in an impressive polar air mass into the Midwest
and the Northeast. This is not unusual for the time of the year. But since that
snow cover was in place, the air mass did not modify as much as it normally
would. Hence a set up of a cold pattern. Throw in a few disturbances that fed
off of the contrast in temperatures from this cold air and the warmth to the
south, and their favorable track to our south, and voila, what we have is the
resultant pattern. 

&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s not the extreme of cold that really makes this
memorable, but the departure from the average that is impressive. We&rsquo;re missing
the cold nights from the cloud cover, but most humans perceive chilliness
during the day anyway.

&nbsp;

Why not the snow on it&rsquo;s own? Well again, it was a symptom
to the big overall pattern. Besides, our memories are short and we always felt
what we experienced was the worst, but even the worst hit areas don&rsquo;t hold a
candle to the biggest warm season snow for the region. That was in 1928. There
was over 2 feet of snow in a period of 3 days when leaves were on trees. And I&rsquo;m
talking the valleys, I have yet to see what fell on the ridges. That is number
one on my list, period. The more recent number one for cold is December of
1989. We spent almost an entire month below freezing and that is not easy for
December. &nbsp;And once again, I&rsquo;m talking
the valleys. 

&nbsp;

&nbsp;]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:10:42 EST</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Frost Versus a Freeze]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[I have a lot of people always ask me what the difference is. A frost occurs when the temperature of a surface drops to the dew point which is below freezing. At this point, we get deposition of ice crystals on these surfaces. Since the cooling always starts with objects on the ground, it is common to get frost when the official low temperature is above the freezing mark. A freeze is more damaging to plants. This occurs when the air temperature drops below freezing and objects on the ground get below freezing for a period of time. This causes water to freeze in parts of a plant and can cause the end of that plants growing season or life.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:07:45 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://wearecentralpa.com/content/fulltext/?cid=125531</link>
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