A snow-covered barn on Penns Park Road in Wrightstown Thursday afternoon.
Credit: Tom Sofield/NewtownPANow.com
For those who like blustery winters, this is your year.
Bitter cold and snow have been staples of the winter season, even more this year than in previous ones.
In Lower Bucks County, snowfall has amounted higher than normal for this time of year, said Walter Drag, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mt. Holly, New Jersey.
At the end of December and continuing into early January, the region experienced one of the older cold snaps we have had in recent memory. Philadelphia’s temperature average in December was about a degree and a half below normal. In January, so far, the difference in temperature has been much more considerable, Drag said.
Using the first six weeks of winter as a barometer for the intensity of the remainder of the season, means there is a likelihood the area will see much more snow and have many more days of frigid temperatures, the meteorologist said.
“We still have a ways to go, but I think that people will end up thinking of this as a longer than normal winter,” Drag said. He added that for people who like cold, wind and snow, this has been and will likely be a good winter.
“It has been a winter of considerable variability,” he said.
In addition to having intense cold snaps, the warm parts of the winter have been higher than normal.
As for the immediate future, Drag said that there are no big storm systems that local meteorologists are watching, but that could change rather quickly.
