Philly is under a wind alert again Friday, the 6th time in the past week
This is the fifth time in the first six days of the month that the National Weather Service has hoisted a wind advisory. The strongest gusts are expected later in the day.
About now this may seem annoyingly familiar: Yet another wind advisory remains up for the Philly region until 4 p.m. Friday for gusts to 50 mph in the wake of what turned out to be rainiest day in eight months.
If the first of the month is any anemometer, what they say about March winds evidently transcends cliche: Friday would be the sixth day of the last seven in which the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly has posted a wind advisory or warning.
The advisory went into effect at 3 p.m. Thursday, and the gusts were expected to have far more staying power than those of Wednesday, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
Some scattered power outages were reported Thursday; however, given that the trees are not yet leafed out, widespread outages were not expected.
Even on Wednesday, Peco reported only about 6,500 outages despite the three hours of heavy rains that broke a 105-year-old record and a gust of 52 mph measured at Philadelphia International Airport.
What explains the recent harvest of gusts in Philly
So far this year, gusts of 35 mph or more have been recorded on 22 different days at PHL, with gusts of 40-plus mph on 15 of those days, and 50-plus on five of them, according to weather service data.
For January and February, no other similar period has in the last five years had as many days with gusts of 40 mph or better.
Weather systems have been moving briskly, and the region has been visited by a sequence of fronts, which form at the boundaries of warm and cold air and air of different pressure, or weight. The frequent presence of high pressure, or heavier air, to the west, and lower pressures to the east is behind the wind fest. Heavier air naturally moves toward lighter air as the planet tries to maintain a pressure balance. Think of crests and troughs in the ocean. (It has been sounding like an ocean around here lately.)
The contrasts are more likely to occur this time of year as the advancing spring and retreating winter wage their battles over our heads.
That’s also why this is the severe-storm season.
No storms on Wednesday reached the severe criterion, with winds up to 60 mph, but they came close, and the tropical-storm-level downpours resulted in 1.54 inches of rain, the most on a calendar day since June 5 and besting a daily record set in 1920.
Is the Philly region still in drought?
The weekly national map posted by the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor is virtually unchanged for the region, with conditions ranging from “moderate” to “extreme” drought.
The maps were drawn on Tuesday, but it’s unlikely that Wednesday’s rains would have made a dramatic difference.
Through Wednesday, precipitation still was about 25% to 30% below normal in the previous 60 days.
No significant rains are expected for at least a week, O’Hara said, but the region has an outside shot at seeing some wet snowflakes early Saturday morning, as a cooldown continues through the weekend, with daily highs around 50 degrees.
A significant warmup is due Monday, and temperatures could crest past 70 on Wednesday.
The winds, also, are due to back off, or at least go on spring break.