The world is unquestionably getting warmer, but bare ground in winter and snow scarcity are long-standing Philadelphia traditions.
“All the action has been out West,” said Steve Decker, a Rutgers meteorology professor.Upper-level troughs, areas of lighter air that favors cold and storminess, have dominated the West, he said. In response, ridging, or heavier air that promotes drier and milder conditions, has built across the rest of the United States.
The persistence might have something to do with the tropical Pacific, where sea-surface temperatures over a continent-size swath of water remain below normal. This La Niña is in its third winter. Philadelphia’s only snowless winter, 1972-73, coincided with a powerful edition of La Niña’s counterpart, El Niño, an unusual warming of the Pacific waters. La Niña was in place in the winter of 1994-95, when the first measurable snow didn’t occur in Philly until Feb. 9, the latest first snow.polar vortex, a powerful system that generates potent windsWhen it weakens, it can allow frigid air to ooze southward.
Storms track along the contrasts of warm and cold air, and under these conditions those boundaries likely would form inland, rather than over the ocean, which would keep Philly on the warmer side of snow-making systems, he said.
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