9 Things Pennsylvanians Do the First Cold Weekend That Southerners Find Excessive
More than 100 inches of snow falls on Erie in a normal year.
That’s enough to bury a one-story house.
Pennsylvania starts getting ready for it on a schedule that makes no sense anywhere south.
These are the things Pennsylvanians do the first cold weekend that Southerners find excessive.
1. Bundling up a Month Before Anyone Has To
Pennsylvanians reach for a coat the moment a Saturday morning dips into the 50s, weeks before winter is anywhere close.
The state’s weather agencies don’t even treat that chill the same way twice.
The median first freeze near McKean County, by the New York line, lands around October 1.
Lancaster County, down in the state’s southeast corner, doesn’t see its median first freeze until around November 1.
That’s a month apart.
So many Pennsylvanians bundle up for a winter that’s still four weeks away wherever they happen to live.
Why Pennsylvania Doesn’t Have One “First Cold Weekend”
Pennsylvania spans mountains, a lake shoreline, and river valleys, and each one runs on a different clock.
The Laurel Highlands rise past 3,000 feet at their highest ridges, and even the lower Pocono Plateau sits hundreds of feet above Philadelphia’s flat, near-sea-level ground.
That elevation alone can push a first frost weeks ahead of the calendar the rest of the state is using.
Erie’s spot on Lake Erie cuts the other way, keeping fall air milder even as the same lake fuels some of the earliest snow anywhere in the state.
2. Treating a 40-Degree Morning Like Black Ice Season
A Pennsylvania morning in the 40s turns many drivers into black-ice skeptics, even with no ice anywhere in the forecast.
PennDOT and the Pennsylvania Turnpike issue caution advisories every time a winter storm threatens the roads, not just once the snow shows up.
Many drivers take that as their cue to creep along at 25 in a 55 zone.
Bridges and overpasses do freeze first because cold air reaches them from above and below, while the ground under a normal stretch of pavement still holds its warmth.
The physics checks out.
None of that explains the driver crawling along dry pavement a hundred miles from the nearest bridge.
Many Pennsylvanians do exactly that anyway, the moment the first frost warning hits.
3. Racing the Family to a Corn Maze
Pennsylvanians treat a cold Saturday as the green light for corn maze season, and they dress for it like the mission calls for base layers.
Full winter coats, gloves, and stocking caps come out for what’s just a walk through cornstalks.
Every single time.
Cherry Crest Adventure Farm in Lancaster County carves five acres of paths into its corn maze.
The full route runs more than two miles and can take up to two hours to finish, according to the farm’s site.
None of that calls for the gear Pennsylvanians show up in.
A 40-degree afternoon is barely brisk next to a true winter day, yet families bundle up as if they’re walking into a snowstorm.
That’s a lot of preparation for a walk through dried cornstalks, the kind of outing that would barely register a shiver anywhere with a longer growing season.
4. Layering up for Friday Night Lights
Friday night football in Pennsylvania comes with more layers than the game itself requires, blankets included, the second the temperature drops into the 40s.
Stadiums stay packed anyway.
Thermoses of hot chocolate and stadium blankets show up in October for games that, in much of the South, would still be played in short sleeves.
5. Firing up the Apple Butter Kettle
Pennsylvania Dutch Country turns the first cool weekend of fall into an all-day project.
That project is a kettle of apple butter, the kind of thing a store-bought jar would replace in under a minute.
Locals call the tradition Lottwarrick Paerti.
A copper kettle goes over a fire, and the apples cook down for hours.
Someone stirs the whole time with a long wooden paddle called a Riehrer, so nothing scorches on the bottom.
Cinnamon and cloves finish it.
That’s a full day of tending a fire and working a paddle for a spread many Southern kitchens would just buy in a jar.
The big organized community boils have thinned out since the early 2000s, but Pennsylvania’s living-history farms keep the kettle going, including Landis Valley Museum’s fall Harvest Days in Lancaster County.
Psst! How much do you know about Pennsylvania’s wild swings between fall and winter? Take our quiz and see how many you get right.
Quiz
Pennsylvania Fall & Winter Trivia
Answer these questions about Pennsylvania’s wildest fall-to-winter swings. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Punxsutawney Phil made his first recorded Groundhog Day prediction in Pennsylvania in what year?
6. Panic-Buying Rock Salt in Erie Before Anyone Else
Erie, Pennsylvania's snowbelt corner, restocks rock salt and snow shovels the moment the first cold front rolls through.
The rest of the state is still weeks from opening the hall closet.
The city averages 103.8 inches of snow a year, according to the National Weather Service's 30-year climate normals, among the heaviest totals anywhere in the Great Lakes snowbelt.
That's not a typo.
It's more than enough reason for shelves to empty out the moment temperatures start dropping, weeks before the rest of Pennsylvania even thinks about winter.
7. Tailgating Colder Than the South
Fans across Pennsylvania tailgate through temperatures that would send much of the South indoors, grills going in a parking lot that's one stiff wind away from miserable.
Steelers fans once braved teens and a near-zero wind chill outside Acrisure Stadium for a January playoff game.
That kind of cold still doesn't keep the parking lot empty.
Eagles fans face the same challenge at Lincoln Financial Field, roughly 265 miles east.
A local Philadelphia news tailgating guide tells fans to dress in layers, watch for frostbite, and expect to stay outside anyway.
Few leave early.
The grill stays lit and the folding chairs stay out until the last possible minute before kickoff.
8. Swapping Screens for Storm Windows
Storm windows still come out by hand in many of Pennsylvania's oldest neighborhoods, pulled down the same weekend the air turns cold.
Philadelphia's rowhouse blocks date back to the 19th century, block after block of them, built long before double-pane glass existed.
It's a Saturday-long chore.
Ladders come out of the garage, and the storm windows come down from the attic.
The whole ritual happens before anyone's confirmed it's going to freeze.
9. Checking the Foliage Report
Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources publishes a foliage report every Thursday during peak season each fall.
Like clockwork.
A cold snap is often the first sign color is coming, so many Pennsylvanians start checking the report the same week temperatures drop.
County ratings update each week from the mountains down to the southeast corner.
The northern tier often peaks in color while Philadelphia's trees are still green.
That color gap lines up almost exactly with the monthlong spread between the state's earliest and latest median frost dates.
The department's reports put northern Pennsylvania's peak color between October 1 and 10, while southeastern counties don't get there until the back half of the month.
9 Pennsylvania Covered Bridges Locals Detour for That Maps Rarely Show
The usual best-covered-bridges roundup for Pennsylvania circles back to the same five or six names every single year.
That's not because the rest disappeared.
It's because nobody bothered driving the gravel roads through Bedford, Somerset, and Perry County to find the bridges locals still detour for on a Sunday afternoon.
9 Pennsylvania Covered Bridges Locals Detour For That Maps Rarely Show
7 Pennsylvania Church and Fire Hall Festival Foods Out-of-Staters Have Never Heard Of
A Methodist congregation outside Dover has run a stuffed pig-stomach dinner as one of its steadiest fundraisers for years.
That's stuffed pig stomach, simmered for hours and sliced like nothing about it needs explaining.
7 Pennsylvania Church and Fire Hall Festival Foods Out-of-Staters Have Never Heard Of
