SUNBURY -- That groundhog will have his time in the sun, seeing his shadow, some other year because the extended forecast for Groundhog Day calls for clouds: no shadow, no six more weeks of winter.
"It looks like next Thursday, there is potential for a storm center to be moving east-northeast toward the Tennessee Valley to the Virginias that could spread clouds across Pennsylvania," said Bob Smerbeck, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather in State College.
On Wednesday, temperatures in Pennsylvania will start out at about 32 degrees but will warm up steadily through the day.
"That's the way this winter has been going, anyway," he said.
Take that, fat, happy groundhog.
Across the country, regions famous for their brutal winters are having the same kind of winter we are here, the Los Angeles Times reported.
For instance, Minneapolis' first zero-degree day didn't happen until Jan. 12, way late in the season. On Jan. 5, the daytime high in Rapid City, S.D., set a record at 71 degrees -- hotter than the same day in Miami, which had 69 degrees.
From September through now, the Valley's temperature is roughly four degrees above normal for this time of year. If you count only winter days -- Dec. 1 through now in meteorologist terms -- the Valley temps have been at least five degrees above normal.
Around here, the normal high and low this time of year is 36 degrees and 19 degrees. But we came just close with "one little spell on the 15th" when the high was 27 degrees and the low was 12, Smerbeck said.
How'd we get so lucky? Blame Canada.
Cold air bottled up way north in Canada and Alaska most of the winter is the main reason it's been so warm, Smerbeck said.
"Some cold masses have bled south, but the jetstream has been fast from west to east," he said.
A fast jet stream means the arctic air can't come down into the United States as usual.
"Sometimes it dips down, but then it lifts right out," hence the cold spates instead of prolonged periods, he said. "We haven't had a persistent dip where it stays that way for a few weeks."
Pressures lower than normal around the Earth's poles have made for pressures higher than normal in the middle latitudes, where the Valley is. This has caused the storm track to go across Canada, where Alaska and the western Canadian Rockies are having all the snow fun.
"In a normal winter, we'd have a storm track that would pull colder air masses farther south," Smerbeck said.
The weather has caused at least one Valley man to go north searching for winter. Jeff Snyder, who's managing the North East Ice Tour Tournaments of ice fishing, canceled two January events in Pennsylvania -- including one scheduled for Saturday at Walker Lake near Troxelville.
He was able to salvage a tournament Friday in Silver Lake, N.Y., about 135 miles north of Erie.
"The shoreline is starting to go but there will be ice yet," he said. "We got a cold night, and we're getting snow here right now."
Another fishing event next Saturday at Kahle Lake, on the borders of Clarion and Venango counties in western Pennsylvania, isn't canceled yet "but the long-range forecast isn't looking good," he said.
The generally mild trend will continue into next month, Smerbeck said, with temperatures two degrees or more above normal. We'll have more seasonal weather as we get into March, "but by then we've missed the coldest three months of winter."
