In the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Penn State.

This is Weather World.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Weather World.

Today is October 29th, 2026.

I'm Rob Lydick, joined by Bill Syrett with the forecast this evening.

Bill foggy start for many folks out there this morning.

Yeah, especially the eastern half of the state.

I don't think they'll be quite so much fog tomorrow, but it will still be a nice mild night.

Yeah, kind of more of the same.

And even a few sprinkle chances I saw on your map coming up.

Amazingly, it might rain across parts of the state.

We'll get those details from Bill in just a moment.

Also coming up on tonight's show, we're going to look back in the Weather World Archives at some weird weather tales.

But first, Bill, in the words of captain Jean-Luc Picard, make it so.

May he rest in peace.

Thank you very much, Rob.

And we'll start by looking at this morning at the Arboretum at Penn State.

You can see this veil of fog actually was quite clear.

And after the sun came up, the fog appeared.

And at least on campus today.

And you can watch this.

It didn't hang around too long after this.

Um, another little burst and then it cleared up pretty nicely during the rest of the day, as it has been much of the time.

And you can see foliage still still hanging in there, but we're passing our peak for sure.

There it goes.

Now, you saw that, um, this morning.

Satellite imagery shows well today's satellite imagery, but this morning you can see the stratus and the low clouds and fog across central and eastern Pennsylvania.

Not so much out west.

And then late in the image, you can see there's actually something on radar.

There are some showers in Canada that will drift south eastward overnight.

And at least northwestern Pennsylvania will get some welcome rain, although it won't be more than a 10th, maybe a quarter inch for some lucky folks.

Temperatures as of 430 today, way above average once again 70s across the western half of the state, near 70 in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Not much range, really about ten degrees across the Commonwealth.

But we're good 15 degrees above average.

Uh, widening that out across the country, you can see a pretty nice demarcation between warm air and relatively chilly air as you go north.

That's where the cold front is located.

That will be producing those showers this evening and bringing us some cooler air for the next couple of days.

Today was the peak of the warmth.

Um, farther to the southwest.

Nothing.

No extremes in temperature.

In that part of the country.

There will be some unsettled weather moving into the West Coast in the next couple of days, and the more they can get, the better, because they really are in quite the drought.

Um, some of the reservoirs at historically low levels.

And so any snow they can get in the mountains and some rain will help that.

But the southeast still warm.

But again, that cold front will be moving southward and will quash the area of warmth pretty substantially the next couple of days.

Uh, moisture coming from the tropics.

Uh, this is probably part of what was Vance or Vance is maybe still hanging in there a little bit.

Uh, that will kind of fester out there in the Southern Plains.

There's some storm systems off the Pacific Coast, and then there's that weak, moisture starved cold front that will be moving southeastward overnight.

So there's the weather map showing that front, the band of showers.

Again, it will weaken.

I think northwestern Pennsylvania stands the best chance of chance of measurable rain.

Get to central and southeastern Pennsylvania should stay dry tonight.

High pressure.

That's the other weather player that will dominate us Friday and into Saturday in fact.

So by tomorrow evening see that high moving in the flow ahead of it out of the north.

So cooler air will be flowing in cold front well to our south, moisture staying off to our west and not much changes when we get to Saturday.

That high.

Pretty much parks over Pennsylvania, although there are some clouds associated with that moisture.

But it will stay dry again into Saturday.

So if we go ahead to the forecast tonight, there'll be a few showers, 10th of an inch or so of rain in the wettest spots, sprinkles, maybe a light shower.

And the rest of northern Pennsylvania, very low chance of a sprinkle in central PA, but otherwise I think it's going to be dry temperatures generally near 50, which is good 20 degrees above average for some of us on Friday.

Cooler northwest breeze, uh, humidity will be low.

And since it hasn't rained for so long, don't lightning fires.

Don't burn any brush on Friday.

Good fire weather.

Um, you know, lots of fuels, so just hold off till Saturday if you need to burn something.

Temperatures generally in the 60s to low 70s in southeastern Pennsylvania, a bit cooler to the northwest as temperatures only get to the 50s.

Saturday.

Another cool day.

Calmer for sure.

Um.

Be careful.

Nope.

Weather wise you don't have anything to worry about.

But in the evening, the ghosts and goblins will be out there.

So watch out.

And then be sure to set your clocks back when you go to bed.

Back with more.

Just a minute.

You never know what you may stumble across in an old attic like this.

The chests can be filled with memories from a time long past.

A time when life seemed simpler.

But the weather was just as unusual.

This evening we will dig into the past as we explore yet another weird weather tale dating back to 1892 in Spain.

The weather had been warm and undisturbed by wind, and soon after dark the sky became overcast by clouds.

About 8:00 there came a flash of lightning, followed by great drops of electrical rain.

Rain which, on touching the ground, crackles and emits electric sparks.

A very uncommon but not unknown phenomenon.

The phenomena continued for several seconds and apparently ceased as soon as the atmosphere was saturated with moisture.

Crackling rain is an oddity for which there is no obvious explanation.

However, the idea that each raindrop carried an electrical charge sufficiently large to cause a spark defies modern atmospheric physics.

While it is true that raindrops and snowflakes in a cumulonimbus cloud collectively carry enough potential to cause a lightning stroke, these electrical charges are not individually carried to the ground during a thunderstorm.

It is much more likely that the engineer who observed this sparkling rain did so with a light source nearby.

The indirect lighting of the first large raindrops could have resulted in a scattering of the light, causing a brief sparkle, especially since he noted that it was already dark.

The faint cracking sound is common as large drops hit dry surfaces, so tonight's mysterious precipitation may not be totally understood yet.

There are a few reasonable solutions to this tale of sparkling rain.

And while one more strange weather event has come into the light of today's understanding, there are dozens more lurking in the dark corners of the annals of weird weather tales.

The sky is full of sights and sounds, colors and shapes which excite the senses.

A brilliant rainbow arcing across the landscape, peals of thunder rumbling across a foreboding summer sky, or a gentle rain bringing water to the brown earth.

But sometimes the sky becomes filled with falling material that shouldn't be aloft at all.

Snakes, frogs, all sorts of small animals, both living and dead.

Coal, seaweed, cobwebs have all been observed to fall from the sky.

Tonight's weird weather tale is a simple story from an English carpenter.

The story is dated February 9th, 1859.

I was getting out a piece of timber for the purpose of setting it on the saw, when I was startled by something falling all over me, down my neck, on my head, on my back.

I reached down my neck, surprised to find that they were little fish.

By this time I found the whole ground covered with them.

They were squirming and jumping all around.

They covered the ground in a long strip about 80 yards by 12, my work shed was covered with them.

My mates and I began gathering buckets full of the writhing fish, scraping with our hands when another burst of fish fell from the gray sky.

The wind wasn't blowing hard, but it was uncommonly wet.

The morning train was passing.

The time was 11 a.m.

Tonight's tale is typical of the credible accounts of bizarre forms of precipitation.

The fish in tonight's story were alive, but others have been found frozen or even headless.

The chunks of material are usually quite small, weighing a few ounces to perhaps a pound, and the falls tend to occur in oblong strips of ground, like in tonight's story.

Now, these falls of strange precipitation last but a few minutes, and the explanation of all of these stories is quite straightforward.

Indeed, the answer is hidden in the turbulent updrafts and downdrafts that are the invisible engines of showers and thunderstorms.

Thunderstorms begin as great masses of rising air pushing skyward as the thunderstorm grows, fed by warm, moist air from the Earth's surface.

Precipitation.

Normal precipitation begins falling toward the earth.

This starts the air rushing earthward the downdraft, which we often feel as the cool rush of air before a summer shower.

These updrafts and downdrafts can reach speeds of up to 100mph, enough to carry objects of considerable size to great heights.

Typically, hail falls in these strong showers chunks of ice, which can range from the size of a pea to the diameter of a grapefruit.

Hail is observed to fall in oblong strips as the downdraft travels across the land.

The whole process of formation and decay of these so-called convective showers is usually about a half hour.

Virtually all the stories of material falling from the sky have facts consistent with that material being drawn skyward by a violent updraft and then being deposited some miles away.

Later, when the downdraft forms.

So there is no mystery in this weird weather tale, but as always, there is a fascination with the wondrous variety of nature.

And so another puzzle of the atmosphere is solved.

But countless riddles remain.

Riddles whose solutions we will continue to seek the next time we gather around the fireplace for another weird weather tale.

No bones about it.

A cold front is going to be crossing Pennsylvania tonight, bringing a few showers, especially to the northwest, where they could get up to a 10th of an inch of rain.

Should be dry for central and eastern Pennsylvania.

Winds out of the west will shift to northwest late, uh, partly to mostly cloudy skies in the west, partly to mostly clear in the southeast.

Temperatures generally within a few degrees of 50.

On Friday, uh, sunshine will be prevalent, I would say mostly sunny across most of the state, but a good northwest breeze, low humidity, great for fires.

The leaves are dry, so don't light any outdoor fires on Friday.

Temperatures getting up into the 70s.

Southeastern Pennsylvania 50s in the northwest.

Saturday.

Uh, pretty nice Halloween day.

Uh, some clouds for sure.

Temperatures near 60.

Watch out though, if you're driving around evening time because there will be some ghouls, goblins, and just kids running around the road.

And, uh, that's not a safe place to be driving sometimes.

Rob.

So, Bill, thinking about that spooky break in your forecast, it seems like many of us will stay bone dry going into these next couple of days.

That would be correct.

Had to get the dad joke in there.

All right, Bill, well, thank you so much for your forecast and thank you for joining us.

Tomorrow, we will have our Friday forecast frenzy.

Believe it or not, it will take us out through almost the first half of November.

We'll see you then.