Weather Rewind, May 15-21, 2011

Outside of Saturday's 81 degree high on what turned out to be a relatively awesome day, last week's weather was not the greatest by any stretch.   Temperatures did average out to 3.4 degrees above normal -- thanks in large part to nights where the low did not drop much -- but with highs generally in the upper 60's or at 70 on three of the days it really didn't feel that warm out, save for Saturday.

Last week felt like weather befitting an ark builder's convention but surprisingly, we're still below normal in the rainfall department for the month in Philadelphia.  Rainfall totaled 1.22" during the week but we're still about nine tenths of an inch below average for rainfall in Philly this month -- other places have seen a good bit more rain this month (as evidenced below in the percentage of rainfall month-to-date) but Philly and points south have dodged the soggy bullet so far.

Of course, the biggest highlight of last week was the weak tornado that damaged businesses in Northeast Philadelphia.   The tornado traveled all of a football field in length and had winds that were not all that strong -- much more typical of what we would see in straight line wind events but because of its cyclonic wind rotation it gets classified as a tornado.