Not Much Of A Big Deal

There was more bang and pop for the thunderstorm buck this morning with the early morning thunderstorms that moved through the region than with this afternoon's meager round of light rain. While the region was spared a heavy soaking and flooding issues, the timing of this afternoon's rainfall (arriving into the western and northern burbs around 11 AM) was early enough to preclude thunderstorm development around here. We can also blame a surface warm front for not being able to progress past Philadelphia during the daylight hours, which prevented temperatures from really taking off in Philadelphia like they did farther south and east (Atlantic City reached a record with 70 degrees...we'll highlight that a little later).

In total, the midday rains brought just 0.07" of rain to Philadelphia (total of a quarter inch as of 5 PM) and more or less just dampened the atmosphere a fair bit.   More rain did fall to the north, with Allentown and Reading picking up between a third of an inch and a half inch.  However, this storm system pretty much failed in computer modeling all around -- from rainfall totals to thunderstorms to temperatures.   The storm is overperforming across the Southeast as a line of severe thunderstorms extends from the Carolinas on southwest into the Deep South.  The best dynamics and energy ultimately set up farther south with this storm while the surface warm front did not quite push as far north as predicted by anyone.

As a result, today's thundery potential busted and we ended up with just a steady round of midday rain while areas farther south got in on the thunderstorms.