A foggy morning in Pittsburgh gives way to another day of rainy weather
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A tornado warning has been issued for parts of Fayette County until 7:45 p.m.
Original forecast below.
It always seems like Pittsburgh is always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it comes to seeing the Northern Lights.
Well, this town has gone and gotten hitched with some gorgeous overnight pictures coming out of the Northern Lights overnight.
SEE IT HERE: Northern lights visible in Pittsburgh area
So what allowed us to see the lights this time after missing so many other times before? The first thing is that our own weather cooperated. After a day of dealing with off-and-on rain, the skies cleared out just ahead of sunset. This part, believe it or not, was the "easy" part. If you know Pittsburgh weather you know that calling skies clearing the "easy" part goes a long way in showing how complicated everything else was that came together for us to see so many gorgeous Northern Lights Pictures.
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So the second part of the equation isn't as easy to talk about, and admittedly this is getting out of my wheelhouse of knowledge. So I am going to try and do my best here.
Sunspot activity has been "extreme" over the past couple of weeks. If you have your eclipse glasses left over from last month and use them now, you may even be able to see some of the "spots" with no extra equipment needed. Sunspots send solar radiation that's electromagnetically charged out from the sun. It goes everywhere. When it hits our atmosphere the violent collision of electromagnetically charged particles sparks a wild light show at both of the earth's poles.
We live in the Northern Hemisphere so we get the Northern Lights also known as the Aurora Borealis. In the Southern Hemisphere, they get the Aurora Australis. Why are the lights only seen at the poles?
It's because the earth itself is electrically charged and the peak of that charge occurs at our poles. The interaction of all this electricity is what you see. The electrical waves our stretched, pulled, and torn in all sorts of odd ways. We get the amazing light show at times from this, and every once in a while it all comes together in just such a way that even here in Pittsburgh we get to see one of nature's greatest light shows.
Let's get back to today's weather with us expecting another wet day. Highs today will be in the low 60s, but we will spend most of the day in the 50s. Just a quick example I have our noon temperature today at 61°. I then have our 2 p.m. temp at 53°. Temperatures will be all over the place. 5p temps should be back in the mid-50s.
Rain chances will peak around noon too. I expect three good shots at rain today with the first rolling through from noon to around 2 p.m. The next round of rain will include a storm chance and should slide through around 4 p.m.
Finally, one more scattered rain chance will occur around 8 p.m. tonight. I keep a small rain chance in for the overnight hours. The rain chance will linger through Mother's Day.
Mother's Day highs will be in the mid-60s with mostly cloudy to overcast skies. Sunday lows will be in the mid-40s.
Finally, looking ahead, Monday's rain chance is looking low. I have scattered showers around for Tuesday and Wednesday.
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