Snowfall reached 17.5” late Thursday at Hartford, Maine, 14” at New London, N.H. and 13.4” at Peru, N.Y. The storm responsible heads out to sea Friday, but wraparound snows will linger in northern New England. Gusty NW winds on the system’s backside have sent chilly air deep into Florida. Wind chill advisories continue from Jacksonville south to Orlando Friday morning. On the other side of the continent, 12”+ was down in another storm late Thursday in Anchorage, Alaska with an additional 6-8” on the way.
This week marks the 135th anniversary of the National Weather Service which began as a unit of the Signal Service Corps on Feb. 9, 1870. Coincidentally, NOAA has just deployed a new $180-million weather and climate forecasting supercomputer. It increases computational speed from 450-billion to 1.3-trillion calculations per second.
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
