Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Philadelphia, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Low pressure slowly pulls away today, resulting in lingering unsettled weather.
A stretch of below normal temperatures begins today, continuing through the weekend as a much colder airmass moves overhead.
Widespread minor and localized moderate tidal flooding expected along the New Jersey coast today.
KEY MESSAGE 1. Low pressure slowly pulls away today, resulting in lingering unsettled weather.
A vigorous upper-level trough continues to evolve across the Eastern U.S. today. This supported the surface low deepening near our forecast area, which will head NE across the waters off New England today. Overall, it will be unsettled across our region today.
Not much has changed with regards to the cold air following the system and the subsequent change in p-type for NW areas. The strength of the parent upper-level trough results in a colder air mass moving in with time, however the initial air mass is not all that cold (the lack of a cold antecedent air mass). As the surface low is consolidating off the northern Mid-Atlantic coast, the winds are turning more out of the northwest and this will increase the cold air advection. This will result in some colder air seeping southeastward today and tonight. The air mass has become sufficiently cold enough mostly across our far northwestern zones for some snow across the higher elevations, confined mainly to the Pocono Plateau. Wouldn't be shocked if some higher elevations got 1-2 inches, but overall less than an inch is expected. Some locations NW of I-95, especially higher elevations, may see a few wet flakes mixing in, especially as precipitation winds down late today and tonight, but no accumulations are expected. Otherwise, a rain event is forecast. Additional rainfall through tonight looks to be maximized along a band from near Allentown southeast into central NJ, where a half inch or more may yet fall. Amounts look to quickly diminish toward the southwest, with little if any additional rain across northeastern Maryland and much of Delaware.
KEY MESSAGE 2. A stretch of below normal temperatures begins today, continuing through the weekend as a much colder airmass moves overhead.
In the wake of the storm, as it deepens and tracks toward the Canadian Maritimes over the weekend, a colder air mass will be in place across our area. In addition, a tightened pressure gradient coupled with deeper mixing will result in a period of breezy to windy conditions over the weekend. The strongest winds look to occur on Saturday, with peak gusts to about 30 mph, then while still gusty on Sunday it appears the speeds come down a little. Daytime temperatures today and Saturday should not get out of the 40s for many areas, with temperatures at night dropping into the 20s to 30s. There could even be some lake effect snow and/or rain showers into the southern Poconos on Saturday.
Temperatures start to moderate a bit Sunday through Tuesday. Despite that, high temperatures are only in the upper 40s to low 50s each day which is still below average for this time of year.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Philadelphia discussion at /o/PHI/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub