Unseasonably warm weather inbound
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Winter is taking a break as temperatures are expected to hit 60 degrees and stay unseasonably warm throughout next week.
National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Colbert said Friday that the high for today is expected to be 60 degrees, with the overnight temperatures into Sunday in the upper 40s and low 50s. Typically, daytime temperatures average 35 degrees for this time of year with nighttime temperature averaging in the low 20s.
"It's not quite at the record, but we're going to be close to the record," Colbert said, noting the record high for Jan. 11 in Altoona is 63 degrees.
Colbert said the reason for the warm weather is a storm system over the central part of the country.
"There's a trough digging down into Texas and a ridge of high pressure over the East Coast," Colbert said, noting the situation allows a southern flow of warm air from the Gulf of Mexico that will peak today before a cold front moves in Sunday morning. While it will be 50 degrees at about
5 a.m., as the morning goes on, temperatures will dip into the 30s before getting back up to 50 degrees on Monday.
Temperatures are expected in the 40s and 50s through Thursday before moving back into the 30s going into next weekend, Colbert said.
While the warmer weather is a reprieve for most, businesses that rely on snow and even the cold may have a rough week.
It's not been a good winter for any business relying on snow removal for revenue, or even construction companies and landscapers who count on the frozen ground and cold temperatures to work on hardscape projects and pour concrete, Joe Beck of Beck's Maintenance and Garden Center pointed out.
"If you don't have a hard surface and everything becomes mud," Beck said Friday, noting that he is also concerned about the company's garden center plants if the weather stays too warm for too long this early in the year. Beck said his company, which apart from its Duncansville location now owns Beck's Gulish's Garden Center in Pinecroft, offers enough variety of services that it can ride out times like this, but he said it is affecting them from a financial standpoint.
"As far as snow plowing, anyone who relies on the snow plowing business is affected by it," he said.
Adam Bonsell, of Property Care by Bonsel, or PCB of Reightown in Antis Township, said it's been a tough winter. After fall cleanup work, he could usually expect two or three snowfalls to finish out the calendar year. Because his business includes interior jobs, there would usually be enough work until the snow removal business picked up in January.
"By this time, I'd thought we'd be knee deep," Bonsell said. Instead, he's been having to call around to pick up smaller jobs, but they don't make up for the lack of snow removal jobs. Bonsell said he and his three workers are down to 15 to 20 hours a week.
"Usually by the second week in January, we'd be getting pounded," Bonsell said. "You can't plow rain. Everyone that is doing snow is suffering."