Major Storm Offshore Brings Very Cold Air
Storm System Late Sunday Monday Snow To Rain
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Major Storm Offshore Brings Very Cold Air
Storm System Late Sunday Monday Snow To Rain
Off to the east on the satellite view this morning is a major storm that is developing offshore. Radars are showing the western edge of rain (and later today snow) just off Eastern Long Island and touching Cape Cod in Southeastern New England. This storm will pull down very cold air from Eastern Canada and you will start to feel it later today. Highs will be in the upper 30s and lower 40s but those highs are already being acheived. Late this morning and this afternoon, look for decreasing clouds, increasing sun, and increasing wind, and temperatures that will begin to ease through the 30s and into the 20s.
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WEATHER RADAR
Tonight under clear skies and a gusty northerly wind, temperatures will keep falling. Even though the air aloft isn’t particularly cold, the low levels of the atmosphere are just the opposite. You will be waking up Saturday morning to temperatures in the single digits to at best low teens. Wind chills will knock another 10 to as much as 15 degrees off those numbers.
Saturday will be very cold with ineffective sunshine and a gusty wind at least for awhile. Highs will be only in the upper teens and lower 20s and then we head down again under clear skies. Winds will start to drop off Saturday night but Sunday morning lows will again be in the low teens to single digits.
Sunday we watch low pressure that brings snow to parts of the Deep South and the Western Carolinas move northeastward. We have been emphasizing for days that this storm is not going to have the arctic air to work on because the cold high will be moving to the east and offshore during Sunday. This is going to start to allow warmer air to slowly work its way into the low levels of the atmosphere and temperatures will begin to slowly rise.
Many of you out there watching this storm have been focused on the wrong elements here. I keep reading about the track is shifted to the west and then to the east, the ensemble models are all offshore. WRONG! NONE OF THAT MATTERS! What matters is that we were supposed to have a little bit of blocking in Northeastern Canada. Instead today’s ocean storm eats away at any blocking, the surface high goes out southeast of Cape Cod, and we get warmer air on easterly winds to come in and wreck the low levels of the atmosphere. Above is the NAM model loop of the storm and below is the latest GFS model. You can see there is very little difference in the outcome on both models.
This is gong to keep snow levels down along and inland of the coastal plain. You can tell just by where the Winter Storm Watches are posted that this is not going to be a huge deal for areas to the east. The low tracks up along and just inland of the coast. Snow spreads northward Sunday, changes to rain as far inland as I-81 in Pennsylvania and also into Upstate NY and Central New England, and it is all done by Monday morning.
I took the GFS snow forecast map from this storm and overlaid what I would consider a rough estimate of snow totals. Ignore the specific numbers because they are rather meaningless and very inaccurate most of the time. I laid out approximate boundaries and lowered abouts by about 30 to 50% in some cases. I think that is a fair guess at this point as far as a rough forecast is concerned. Snow amount maps from NWS will be up this evening as they do not extend far enough out as of the time of this post. Those of you reading this on Patreon can and have already seen my early call snow forecast map and there are no changes in that forecast at this time. Behind the storm Monday it turns windy and colder again. Next week an arctic front comes through Thursday and we could see a very cold air mass arrive from Canada next weekend It is possible that another storm system could be in the mix on Friday to bring in that cold air but we have not given the long range a serious look at this time.
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