If you are watching your snow melt away this afternoon, don’t worry more is on the way. This of course is not good news for those in Connecticut and Long Island.
There is growing support for a disturbance currently over the Southwest to make a run up the coast or at least as far north as the New York City metropolitan areas on Wednesday night into Thursday morning. This low pressure system will be tapping into the clearly juiced up Sub Tropical Jet stream and will bring a swath of moderate to heavy snow to the region. At this time though, there is still a question on boundary layer temperatures though, especially for southeastern New Jersey and Long Island as surface temperatures may be slightly too warm for snowfall. While snowfall amounts on the latest guidance range from a few inches to as much as a foot of snow, I don’t believe a snow map is warranted at this time as there is far too much volatility in defining some important factors in terms of snowfall amounts. However, the best potential for heavy snowfall would likely be from Baltimore, Maryland through Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and over central New Jersey with lesser amounts to the north and south of that line. I expect to have far great details on the potential for this storm by this evening with a snow map expected for tomorrow morning’s updates.
Thereafter, I have my eye on Saturday evening through Sunday as three disturbances, one from the Arctic jet stream, second from the Polar jet stream, and third from the Sub Tropical jet stream all interact to provide the potential for a major winter storm for the eastern United States from North Carolina all the way to Maine. There are a lot of details to work out for this storm but my thoughts are that this storm is likely to develop between Saturday night through Sunday and will have the potential to produce significant snowfall for the Philadelphia and New York City metropolitan areas. However, if the phase of this storm is off by just a few hours, than you could end up with a rain storm like seen on the Canadian model guidance or a complete miss as seen on the ECMWF model guidance. If you get a perfect phase then you end up with an impressive snow storm as seen on the GFS and UKMET guidance. Really, we need to get this storm for Wednesday night out of the way to see how the pattern is set up over the northern Atlantic. Then we can move forward. However, as I warned my Premium Members, this month is ending up very stormy and the pattern is certainly favorable for these winter storms. It’s all about time and interaction.
I will have more on these two storms tomorrow. In the meantime, my best advise is to prepare but don’t get frantic.
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