The new year, as well as the new century, started off pretty dull (weather-wise) with no precipitation reported and pretty seasonable temperatures across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In fact, the weather was almost as exciting as the Y2K problems experienced at the stroke of midnight. The only exciting thing may have been a high of 71 degrees in Spring Grove on January 2.

For the beginning of the first week of year 2000, mild to seasonble temperatures and scattered light precipitaton took place.

This pattern did persist for about two weeks while the meteorologists of Pennsylvania would sat back and relaxed, until what would look like the start of a good winter, took a turn for the worse.

On January 13, a very strong low pressure system moved through Pennsylvania bringing down temperatures by as much as 30 degrees! Heavy snowfall also came along for the ride dumping as much as 5 inches total for the first winter storm of the new century. Temperatures remained bitter cold with a low of -11 degrees occuring in Montrose and similar readings around that area! Would this be the last of the bad weather? Could we still have a "good" winter. The answer was unfortunately - no.

A week later, on January 20 and 21, another storm would hit the state of Pennsylvania. This storm was much stronger than the previous one and brought some more cold air and more inches of snow to add. The heaviest snowfall experienced occured in the central part of the state where depths of 6-8 inches were reported and in Erie where accumulations reached up to 11 inches.

As the saying goes, "always watch your back," and the weather was no excpetion. On the battle field of the eastern United States, "attacks" come frequently from the west, but on January 25, the south would have something to say about that. Another storm invaded the eastern coast of the United States as a low pressure system moved from the Carolinas, along the coast. This storm mainly affected the eastern-central portion of Pennsylvania with snowfalls over a foot of snow occuring in the south-eastern part of the state. This storm had such an impact on the eastern part of the United States that it was named, "The Blizzard of January 25."

Well, the month of January was almost over and everybody was getting ready for the most popular sporting event in the country - The Super Bowl. But, as the saying goes, "it's not over until the fat lady sings," and we certainly did not hear that fat lady's voice. We were hit with another winter storm. This one was not as strong as previous storms, but mother nature thought she would stick another one in before the month of February came around. The heaviest snowfall occured in the central part of the state with readings as high as 7 inches being reported.

So, the month of January started out boring, but things picked up interest as storm after storm invaded the state dumping regular amounts of snow (or so it seemed). The month started off with clear roads, green grass, and decent temperatures, but ended icy, with white landscaping along with cold and dry conditions.

-Steven Greenberg

Here are the weather extremes across the Commonwealth: