What will Erie's April weather be like for solar eclipse watchers heading here?

With the solar eclipse just two weeks away, it's still a little too early to say if watchers in Erie could be sweating in shorts or huddled under umbrellas on April 8.

Forecasters are leaning warmer rather than colder for April in Erie this year but give about equal odds for the month to be more or less rainy than normal.

Jim Sullivan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, said it doesn't look like high odds that Erie will be abnormally cold or wet on April 8.

"It's still a little too early to get specific," he said Monday morning.

However, AccuWeather's website on Thursday morning did offer a forecast for April 8 in Erie. The AccuWeather forecast for that afternoon called for a temperature of 64 degrees with partly sunny skies, cloud cover of 46 percent and no chance of precipitation.

Temperatures

An outlook, issued by the NWS Climate Prediction Center for April 6 to 19, suggests that Erie is likely to have temperatures leaning above normal for that time period, which includes the day of the solar eclipse. The normal high and low for Erie in April are 56.8 and 38 degrees.

For just April 8, the average high temperature in Erie, based on NWS records from 1874 to 2023, is 48.8 degrees and the average low is 33.9.

Precipitation

The precipitation outlook for April 6 to 19, also issued March 22 by the National Weather Service, said Erie has an equal chance of being above or below normal when it comes to rainfall. Normal precipitation for Erie in April is 3.47 inches.

Average precipitation for Erie on April 8 is one-tenth of an inch of rain.

Normal snowfall in Erie in April is 2.6 inches. The National Weather Service didn't offer a snowfall prediction for this April. The average for April 8 is two-tenths of an inch of snow.

The sky

Overcast was the most frequently observed cloud cover on April 8, between about 1 and 5 p.m. at Erie International Airport, going back to 1948, according to NWS information. Skies were overcast 57.9% of the time.

The solar eclipse is expected to begin in Erie at 2:02 p.m., reach maximum at 3:18 p.m. and end at 4:30 p.m.

Solar eclipse: What past Erie weather can help us to expect on April 8, 2024

"The current climatological outlook suggests El Nino conditions will be present during the time of the 2024 solar eclipse," a National Weather Service solar eclipse webpage states. "The primary area this will impact looks to be along the lakeshore where there is historically more cloud cover compared to years without an El Nino pattern."

Dana Massing can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie, PA weather outlooks for solar eclipse day April 8