Winter storm warning issued for Centre County as snow predictions top 18 inches
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Centre County and the surrounding area Friday morning, effective from 10 p.m. Saturday to 1 p.m. Monday. The agency said it expects between 10 and 18 inches of snow to fall, potentially making this weekend’s storm a once-in-a-generation snowfall event.
“Travel will be very difficult to impossible,” the NWS said in its warning. It added that snow could fall at a rate of “one to two inches per hour at times.”
The NWS issues winter advisories, watches and warnings. Warnings are the most severe and are issued for significant weather events.
The commercial forecaster AccuWeather predicts between 8 and 12 inches of snowfall as of Friday morning. It and the NWS predict the storm will come in from the west starting late Saturday or early Sunday, hitting Philipsburg before burying everything from the Mountaintop Region to the State College-area lowlands until early Monday.
“We’ve gained a tremendous amount of confidence to know that, yes, the storm is coming and yes, it is going to snow,” AccuWeather meteorologist Bob Larson told the Centre Daily Times Thursday. He noted timing and precise snowfall predictions would come more into focus in the coming days.
Many businesses have already announced they’ll be closed Sunday, and this weekend’s storm is likely to at least delay school on Monday. Some schools were delayed Thursday morning after just 1.5 inches of snow fell overnight.
“You can surmise that there will be the very least delays, if not closures, when it comes to schools, depending on exactly how long it does last,” Larson said. He noted Penn State has been known to postpone classes due to a couple of inches of snow.
Larson expects the storm will bring “lightweight, fluffy snow” to the area due to cold temperatures, meaning shoveling and clearing off car roofs as required by law will be easier than during warmer snowstorms.
The last time Centre County saw a foot of snow in one day was December 2020, when a record 15 inches fell Dec. 17 during what was an otherwise tame winter. The county has not seen more than 8 inches of snow in a day — the lower end of what is expected this weekend — since.
The record for snowfall in State College Jan. 25 is 8.5 inches. That storm came in 1948, the year Harry Truman was elected to his only full term as president.
If the upper bound of snowfall predictions is accurate, this weekend’s storm could see the most single-day snowfall since March 3, 1994, when between 18 and 26.6 inches fell on the county. The 1994 storm tied one from the year prior as the second-biggest ever recorded in Centre County.
Eighteen inches of snow would put this weekend’s storm at No. 11 in Centre County history.
While snowstorms of this magnitude are uncommon in central Pennsylvania, this weekend’s would not necessarily be an outlier. The most dangerous conditions are expected in the South, where ice could bring widespread power outages and treacherous driving conditions. Such conditions are not expected in Centre County as of Thursday.
