Freaky Friday

The morning radar and temperature overlay is showing a "lull" between rounds -- this looks like a three round event at play as round one has lifted through most of the city and is about to lift through Bucks and the eastern suburbs, and round two is approaching us from the west in Central Pennsylvania.   In the interim, a couple of "dry" hours except for spray on the roads.    Temperatures this morning are pretty much in line with what we thought as a warm front lurks just to our south -- 40's in place around town this morning, with 50's in Lower Delaware, and 30's in the Poconos where icy rain has fallen for much of the evening.

The radar look on the left shows a bit of a wider view of the incoming storm and the other two rounds.   Round two is the batch in Central Pennsylvania in association with surface low pressure that will ride east-northeast through the state today.  As this moves through later this morning, expect a round of rain to come back in (probably after 7, 8 AM) and for some of that rain to be heavy in the northern suburbs.  Farther south, showery rain will dash through.   Around midday, this second round of rain clears the coast and we enter a dry slot between this and the upper level energy that lurks back in Ohio (you can see a break in Eastern Ohio on the left edge of the map).   Winds will shift to the west-southwest and increase to 15-25 mph, with some clearing possible for a couple of hours as those west-southwest winds 'dry' out the lower atmosphere.    As that upper energy works east and pulls cold air in, thunderstorms or gusty showers could break out along the leading edge of the colder air.   Those showers/storms will work through between 3 and 5 PM and could bring a brief, heavy shower but more importantly, bring the strongest winds of the day to those areas they impact assuming they develop.   Winds could gust to 60 mph, perhaps higher in those gusty showers/storms.   By definition, that's severe criteria so it's possible we could see a few rogue warnings this afternoon across Southeastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey.

Temperature-wise, it's going to be a bouncy day.  Around Philadelphia, temperatures will stay in the 40's until late morning before they begin to spike in the dryslot.  We could get into the 60's for a time south of the city but could approach that mark around the city for a couple of hours if we get some sun.   As the front/gusty showers work in towards dinner we will see temperatures drop off after 5 PM through the 50's and 40's over the course of the evening, leading to a cool and windy night.

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