Snow Forecast Maps For This Weekend For Upstate NY & New England

Call it practice for the coming winter but I thought I would put up the snow forecast maps from the GFS and Nam models from the overnight guidance and see what it comes up with. Clearly the models have 2 different ideas.

The first snows are always very tough to figure especially in the middle of October when snows are very uncommon even in the coldest of places in the Northeast US. Certainly the air seems cold enough but it is biased by the colder air aloft and therefore likely overdone, particularly with no impressive surface development. Elevated areas are going to probably see what ever snowflakes fall. The dark blues are indicitive of very small amounts. The nam really remains unimpressed by all this. My guess is that there could be a few pockets in upstate NY that see something. Perhaps some of the highest terrain will put down the first light accumulation. Northern New England stands a little better chance of seeing a few inches in places but again I would favor the higher elevations and not the valleys where it might just not be cold enough.

The surface temperatures really dont get cold until Saturday evening in those northern areas and by then the bulk of the precipitation is done. Another weak disturbance is shown to move across Pennsylvania and offshore New Jersey during Sunday.

How much of this remains to be seen. It does come along at the time the coldest air is overhead between 8pm Sunday to 2am Sunday. Snow flurries in the Poconos I suppose are not impossible if this is real. The model does show light rain in New Jersey. One thing to consider is that if there is cloud cover Sunday night, it could keep temperatures above freezing by Monday morning if this is real. This looks to be the cheapest of cheap thrills.

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