Winter Storm and Winter Weather in Pennsylvania, January 2 to 3, 1999

Wintry precipitation affected Eastern Pennsylvania the evening of the 2nd and morning of the 3rd. It lasted the longest in the Poconos and claimed the life of an 85-year-old Saylorsburg man (Monroe County) who slipped on the ice and died from the injuries he sustained a couple of weeks later.A very cold and dry air mass built into Eastern Pennsylvania on the 1st and the 2nd. As the high pressure system built into New England and the adjacent coastal waters, the circulation around it and a low pressure system over the Lower Ohio Valley started to bring in warmer air from the Atlantic Ocean. During the evening of the 2nd the air near the ground was cold enough for precipitation to start as light freezing rain and sleet from the Lehigh Valley south. In the Poconos precipitation started as snow and sleet. Precipitation intensity was light for the first several hours of this event. This permitted temperatures to rise above freezing before the onset of heavy rain. The only places this did not occur were in the valleys of the Poconos as several hours of heavy freezing rain occurred during the early morning of the 3rd. By mid-morning of the 3rd even the Poconos' air temperatures went above freezing. Water equivalents of ice and sleet around the Philadelphia area were only a few hundredths of an inch. This increased to one to two tenths of an inch in Berks County and the Lehigh Valley and as much as three-quarters of an inch in the valleys of the Poconos. Because this occurred late on a weekend night, the number of reported vehicular accidents was not very high in the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos. In and around Philadelphia numerous fender benders were reported. A truck spreading salt even overturned. A six lane stretch of Roosevelt Boulevard within Philadelphia was closed because of icy conditions.