Thank Wilma, sort of, for the rain, which will make this the wettest October on record.
The hurricane is tracking east in the Atlantic and won’t be anywhere near land, but the heavy moisture in the system will contribute to intense weather throughout the East Coast, especially in New England, which will endure another round of flooding along with large amounts of snow in the mountains.
Lancaster, relatively speaking, will get off easy.
“There will be a confluence of two systems,” explains Eric Horst, meteorologist at Millersville University. “A jet stream disturbance from the Midwest will trigger the development of a big nor’easter along the New England coast. Wilma is the icing on the cake. As she’s exiting into the Atlantic, she’ll be making some of her moisture available. (The nor’easter) will tap into that moisture and draw it in.”
The heaviest rain in Lancaster will fall tonight and into Tuesday night.
“At this point, there’s not a flood watch,” Horst said this morning. “But there could be one later today. There is some uncertainty as to how much moisture we will tap from Wilma. If we get 3 inches, we’ll get some modest flooding.”
Regardless, a mere half inch of rain will turn this into the wettest October on record.
“We’ve got 7.82 inches and the record is 8.32, set back in 1932, so we’re a half inch shy,” Horst says. “We will surpass that tonight or tomorrow.”
This comes after two months of “mini droughts” in August and September.
“Mother Nature, as we see time and time again, turned the tables on us,” Horst says. “We’ve gone from famine to feast.”
The rain will be followed by blustery winds and temperatures dropping from the mid-40s into the 30s.
“The rain will taper off Tuesday night and it may be mixed with flurries,” Horst says. “Wednesday and Thursday will be windy and temperatures will be below normal all week.”
Horst says it will be too windy for frost to develop until Thursday or Friday.
“I do think we’re going to have a good frost one of these mornings,” he says. “Probably Friday, but maybe Thursday. People who have plants outside that are sensitive will want to follow the forecast.”
Frost and flurries don’t sound too bad compared to what’s going to be going on in other parts of the state and in New England.
“This nor’easter is going to be a memorable storm for New Englanders,” Horst says. “The wind-driven rain is going to make them feel like they’re in the middle of Wilma. And the mountain snow is going to be a big event.”
Northern Pennsylvania could very well see snow, too, Horst says. Lots of snow.
“Scranton might get several inches and the Poconos and northern Pennsylvania could see 10 inches.”
But it’s only October, you say, and this is not Minnesota.
“We see these kinds of October storms every five or ten years in Pennsylvania,” Horst says. “Back in 1993, State College got two feet of snow in October.
Now for those of you who like apocalyptic visions, there is the thinnest of thinnest of possibilities that the northeast could see a once-in-a-century “perfect storm” develop over the next few days.
Here’s the scenario, as unlikely as it is:
The nor’easter barrels into the East Coast and butts heads with Wilma, which has not weakened much from its fury in Florida.
It would turn into a super monster storm, much like the one immortalized in the book and movie, “The Perfect Storm.”
But Horst says there’s a reason those perfect storms happen so rarely.
“Nor’easters are cold and hurricanes are warm. They don’t like each other. It’s rare for the two disturbances to merge body and soul. What is much more common is what’s going to be happening here, where the tropical storm is weakening and feeds moisture into the nor’easter.”