Of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State.

This is Weather World.

Hello everyone and welcome to Weather World.

Today is Wednesday, May 13th, 2026.

I'm Rob Lydick, joined by Bill Syrett with the forecast and Bill out there this afternoon.

A line of storms now moving through northwest PA.

Yeah there's been some hail with a few of the hotter cells.

I'm sure there's been gusty winds and that will progress across the state as we go through the evening.

Okay.

We'll get the details in Bill short range in just a moment.

Also coming up on tonight's show is our monthly installment of Climate Watch, where we put our finger on the pulse speed of global and regional climate.

We'll take a look at our forecast from a month ago and make a new one that goes out to mid June.

But first, here's Bill.

Thank you very much, Rob.

And we will start with the four corner cam.

You can see by the Pittsburgh Camera.

Now this is remember we're at 430 now.

Um Pittsburgh 15 minutes ago was a pretty exciting looking.

Um it has cleared behind some passing showers and thunderstorms.

Um Erie just has a low stratus deck at Wilkes-Barre and reading kind of in and out of, um, limited sunshine ahead of the cold front temperatures as of four 3060s across much of eastern Pennsylvania until you get toward Philly, where there was some sunshine and temperatures in the mid 70s there, 49 in Erie.

Undoubtedly, the wind is coming off the chilly lake.

Um, 50s in the high elevations of northwestern Pennsylvania.

You go farther to the northwest.

That's the air that's going to be over us tomorrow.

Looking at the satellite radar loop again as of 430 by Showtime, this line of storms should be passing through central Pennsylvania.

But again, some hail in the hotter cells.

Otherwise, just brief heavy rains and some lightning and gusty winds as this passes through that accompanies the cold front behind it.

That blob of stratus up there is the the core of the chill that will be passing over Pennsylvania tomorrow ahead of the cold front, some in and out, scattered showers, uh, light rain that will also pass toward the south and east during the evening hours.

After this cold shot, we will work into an area of high pressure, and the temperatures will gradually warm as the sunshine returns.

More of it on Friday than there will be tomorrow.

But out west, showers and storms in the Rockies, some of them going severe, as well as an upper level disturbance in the northwest, moves into that part of the country.

Uh, air is very warm and unstable there.

Thus the thunderstorms temperatures in the mid to upper 80s from Denver all along the Front Range.

Billings, Albuquerque, Billings isn't the front Range, but it's it's in Montana.

And it's not usually quite that hot at this time of year.

Warm in Texas and basically the northeast, once again, the coldest part of the country.

And that will continue for another day or so.

Weather map shows low pressure moving to our north.

That cold front this evening will be passing through eastern Pennsylvania and then out of the Commonwealth by tomorrow.

There's the area of high pressure.

It will take a little bit of time to build in, as this storm kind of slows down and winds up off the New England coast, rain will hang on across New England.

There'll be some showers across parts of Pennsylvania during the day tomorrow, and the air will be quite chilly.

Moving ahead to Friday, that high pressure system will move off to our south.

You can see southwest flow beginning to move in kind of a Bermuda high.

Set up by the time we get into the weekend.

So the peak of the chill will be on Thursday.

We'll start getting into some warmer air and sunnier skies by Friday.

The upper air map shows that as warm air, cold air aloft moves off to our east and then westerly to southwesterly flow will take over and begin bringing in that warmer air at the surface.

High resolution maps by this evening show showers and thunderstorms moving off southeastern Pennsylvania tomorrow morning.

A batch of clearing just east of the Allegheny front.

Clouds will come and go during the day tomorrow.

Showers will be mostly confined to the high elevations of western and northern Pennsylvania as that cold air sweeps in on gusty northwesterly breezes.

So tonight, showers and storms ending late in the east.

Temperatures down to the mid 50s in Philly, mid 40s in the central counties.

Upper 30s.

High elevations of northwestern Pennsylvania where there will be some showers later tonight.

Thursday mostly cloudy across much of the Commonwealth.

Chilly 40s and 50s across western Pennsylvania with showers from time to time.

Southeastern stay dry, getting up near 65 to 70 in the warm spots.

And then we get ahead to Friday with more sunshine.

It will be much warmer in the west.

Temperatures in the 60s there.

Southeastern Pennsylvania near 70.

Only some sprinkles in the northeast dry for the rest of us.

Back with more.

Just a minute.

This is Climate Watch, where we put our finger on the pulse speed of global and regional climate.

Marissa Ferger will join me in just a few moments to verify our fearless forecast from four weeks ago.

Then she'll be making a new one that takes us out into the middle of June.

But my job as we begin this segment is to take a look back at the month that was, and put some context on some of the temperature and precipitation anomalies that we saw starting off with temperature anomalies.

These are statewide rankings across the lower 48.

Notably warm.

In fact, about 24 states seeing a top ten warmest April on record.

Where you see the 132 in this deepest shading of red across the Ohio Valley into the Mid-Atlantic.

It was, in fact, the warmest April on record.

131 in Pennsylvania means it was the second warmest April on record.

Over the course of 2026.

In terms of April 2026 for precipitation, we had some wet anomalies in the Great Lakes.

132 means it was the wettest on record in both Wisconsin and Michigan, but dry anomalies stretching from just off to the south of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland all the way down through the Carolinas and Georgia.

In fact, we had that deepening drought with the wildfires blossoming in southern Georgia into Florida.

So one of the driest on record across some portions of the eastern seaboard, ranking in the top third for wet Aprils here in the Keystone State.

Globally, it went down as the fourth warmest on record following up last month, which was the fourth warmest March on record.

You can actually see a lot of the warm anomalies, more of those showing up on this map than the cooler than average anomalies.

Very warm last month in Europe, where it was also notably dry there over the course of April.

Kind of see some of those dry anomalies here in the eastern seaboard.

Also very dry.

Last month in some portions of the land down under.

Now we'll switch ahead of what's to come over the course of this fearless forecast period, which includes the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season goes from June 1st to November 30th.

We've got a refreshed name list.

Of course, we rotate these names every about six years or so, so some of them may be familiar.

Bertha, Cristobal.

Also seeing Isaias showing up on the list yet again.

But we'll begin the season with Arthur for the first name on this year's batch.

Forecasts are already out for the Atlantic hurricane season, calling for a below average season in terms of activity by Colorado State only calling for 13 named storms.

Six hurricanes, two of them major hurricanes.

We're talking category three or stronger and a below average level of accumulated cyclone energy coming in at 90.

Other folks issuing some forecasts as well include NC state.

They're calling for the season to be near average, even slightly below.

But NOAA has yet to release their forecast for the season.

They'll be doing that on Thursday, May 21st.

I suspect that it will also be below average for the forecast when it comes to Atlantic hurricane activity.

One of the main reasons why you've heard about this before, we've been talking about it on the show, certainly the burgeoning El Nino.

You can see the above average sea surface temperature anomalies across the equatorial Pacific that portends to more wind shear in the Atlantic basin.

Now wind shear, when we're talking about severe thunderstorms, you actually need a lot of change in wind speed and direction.

With height.

That's wind shear.

You need that for strong thunderstorms.

But for tropical cyclones you actually don't want a lot of wind shear kind of breaks apart the storms prevents them from really organizing.

We expect that that will be the case in the Atlantic Basin.

So despite seeing some above average sea surface temperature anomalies in the Gulf and the Caribbean, we think that the wind shear and the El Nino effect will be the dominant player for this season's outlook.

Now we'll turn the clocks back four weeks to see what we call for in our last fearless forecast.

And we're actually going to use the number of really warm days as our forecasting threshold.

This time of the last 35 days, 17 of them were ten or more degrees above average in terms of high temperatures.

Keep that number in mind as we look at the jet stream over the next four weeks.

If if there's going to be a dip in the jet stream, it's most likely to be over the Rockies.

This will generate some storms to the lee of the Rockies, and they'll head eastward.

So we do think there will be adequate precipitation over the next four weeks, particularly northern and western parts of the state.

It will stay west in the Great Lakes.

But this kind of pattern with the jet stream right over us, will give us opportunities to temper the warmth.

And that's what we're going to say in our fearless forecast.

We're calling it tempering the temperature.

We're going to focus on days that are ten or more degrees above average.

Remember, 17 of the last 35 have been ten or more degrees above average.

We're going to call for all four of the first four days during the next four weeks to be that far above average.

But then after that, no more than four more of the remaining 24 days to be ten or more degrees above average.

And there will be enough spring showers over the next four weeks, with more of them concentrated in the northern and western parts of the state, and this is valid through May 13th.

As far as precipitation was concerned, over the past four weeks, it was wetter than average across northern and western Pennsylvania, but continued dryness in the places that needed the rain across southern and eastern Pennsylvania.

But how about the primary forecast dealing with high temperatures?

John mentioned the first four days with highs ten or more degrees above average.

And look at that.

Nailed that one.

But then we needed just four more days with high temperatures at ten or more degrees above average.

And look at this one, two, and three.

So John and Ben nailed this forecast.

Overall, over the past four weeks, we've had ten degree ten days with temperatures above average and 18 with high temperatures below average.

So we continue to see that temperature roller coaster, as we typically do in the spring.

Now, as we look ahead to the next five weeks, we're going to notice that the average position of the jet stream is trending farther to the north.

And that's what we typically see this time of the year.

As far as the Pacific Northwest is concerned.

We're going to have some trough here over the next few weeks, and that's going to bring temperatures down a little bit.

So not as warm as they've been seeing, but a big ridge of high pressure is expected across the northern Plains.

That's going to keep things dry across that part of the country, especially in Nebraska, eastern Wyoming, eastern Colorado, where they desperately need the rain.

So deepening drought, hot spells across the four corners, bouts of severe weather across the Mississippi Valley continue dryness where they really need the rain across parts of Georgia and Florida.

And we're expecting frequent fronts here across the northeast.

What does that mean for Pennsylvania?

Well, we think we're going to be seesawing into summer.

With those fronts moving through, we think we'll have at least 14 days with high temperatures above average, but then at least 14 days with high temps below average.

We're not seeing the chance for excessive wetness, so we think they'll be continued drought in southeastern Pennsylvania.

And this is valid through the next five weeks ending on June 17th.

And we'll be back in a moment with more.

We'll be going down the seesaw tonight and tomorrow.

Tonight, a cold front will pass from northwest to southeast.

Showers and thunderstorms ahead of it will end late in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Temperatures getting down to the mid 50s in Philadelphia, 40s for most of the rest of us.

Coldest spots in northwestern Pennsylvania in the upper 30s with scattered showers generally of the light variety in the west.

Heavy stuff will end by midnight in southeastern Pennsylvania on Thursday.

The core of the coldest air will be over over the top of US.

Temperatures in the 40s and 50s across western and central Pennsylvania with scattered showers during the day.

Some sun in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Temperatures getting into the 60s.

Their brisk northwesterly breeze will make it feel cold and raw, especially where it stays cloudy.

Friday we saw back up temperatures start rising back to near normal, and in the 60s to low 70s across the state.

It will be dry, it will be more sunshine.

And that's just a taste of things to come.

Rob, as we switch into summer, I think next weekend looks pretty warm going into next week.

I'm already starting to do some thinking about when to install my my window unit AC's for the season.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm looking forward to my garden starting to grow.

There you go.

Well, thank you so much for your forecast.

Thank you Bill, thank you for tuning in.

Believe it or not, it's been a year since we moved back into the recently renovated band, Family Studios.

We've got a feature talking all about that on tomorrow night's show.

We'll see you then.