Potential for snow squalls may make journey difficult round western Pennsylvania

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Rain showers are altering to snow, and the potential for snow squalls may make journey difficult.  

Tuesday is a First Alert Climate Day with impacts on the night commute and journey Monday night time and Tuesday morning. Gentle rain showers have been mixing with flurries and because the colder air arrives, regularly altering over to some lake impact snow showers by means of the afternoon and night. 

Temperatures are slowly dropping from 40 down into the higher 20s by early Tuesday morning. Snow squalls will likely be attainable within the I-80 hall and into the Laurel Highlands, so be ready for low visibility and issue touring in the event you encounter these occasional heavier snow bands by means of Tuesday morning. 

Winds will likely be gusty in a single day with gusts as much as 30 to 40 mph throughout the area. This can drop wind chills into the kids tonight and Tuesday morning.   

Up north in Lawrence County, PennDOT mentioned there are 23 vans out. PennDOT mentioned crews could not pre-treat the roads as a result of the rain would have simply washed off the brine. On Route 422 close to I-79 in Portersville, KDKA-TV’s Jennifer Borrasso experiences roads are moist and there have been no experiences of crashes but. 

“Every time we had our morning name and had been debating on pre-treating or not, I just about seemed out the window from the workplace, which is correct alongside Route 18, and I may nonetheless see the water was happening the aspect of the street. The roads had been nonetheless actually saturated,” mentioned Mike Horrell, PennDOT’s Lawrence County supervisor. 

Horrell mentioned the brine washed off the street.  

“For those who would brine with that saturation, two issues are going to occur,” Horrell mentioned. “It is both truly goes to make your freezing temperature larger on the street and you’ll create a worse situation, or it is only a full waste.”

In Allegheny County, Public Works will deploy 22 salt vans with plows when the snow begins to fall. Public Works says all 50 of its salt vans have been totally inspected, and the division has 12,859 tons of salt and three,705 gallons of liquid calcium chloride in inventory.

As for snow totals by means of later Tuesday, many of the Pittsburgh space will see round 1 to 2 inches with areas north as much as 3 inches. The I-80 hall is underneath a winter climate advisory for larger totals — 2 to three inches and even as much as 5 inches north of I-80. The Laurel Highlands and Westmoreland and Fayette ridges are underneath a winter storm warning and can see the very best totals of 3-plus inches with the very best elevations within the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland probably getting as much as a foot of snow by means of Tuesday night time.

Hotter air and sunshine return Wednesday and we’ll be again into the higher 40s by the point winter formally arrives Thursday. The Christmas vacation weekend seems to be primarily dry and delicate with temperatures within the higher 40s and 50 attainable on Christmas Day.