Snow: The Great Melt
Officially, Philadelphia snow depth down to zero.
As of 7 a.m. Friday morning the National Weather Service was reporting a snow depth of 8 inches in Philadelphia.
And while snow-and-ice cover remains in areas beyond the official observation station, as of 2 a.m. Monday, in Philadelphia all the snow officially had returned to new roles in the water cycle.
The March sun put on an awesome display this weekend, bumping up temperatures beyond what computer models had foreseen, with temperatures pushing past 40 Saturday and reaching 50 Sunday.
The result was a snow-vanishing act, and during the next few days, expect snow to disappear even from some of the stubborn sun-challenged side streets and from those areas that received some of the heftier ice-and-snow totals last week.
Tragically, as we now know, that erstwhile dense snow cover had hindered the search for 13-year-old Cayman Naib, whose body was discovered Sunday on the family property in Newtown Square, where about 10 inches of snow had fallen on Thursday.
Philadelphia's seasonal total stands at 23.3 inches, and the amount that has fallen since Feb. 1 -- 18.6 -- is about equal to what typically falls in December, January, and February, combined.