Well the good ole TV Weather Personalities winter weather hype has begun. As many of you have heard, there is a chance for a strong storm to pass through our area starting late Saturday night through Sunday. What this storm actually will look like, I’m not sure yet. All that I do know is that we have several scenarios possible, and that one of them will not make many people happy…
Short version:
Scenario 1: Heavy rain storm all day Sunday, followed by a steep temperature drop Sunday night (GFS, EURO as of this morning)
Scenario 2: Heavy snow to start, changing to heavy rain, followed by a steep temperature drop (EURO until this morning)
Scenario 3: Heavy snow for most of the Sunday, with a change to rain/freezing rain accompanied by the steep temperature drop (UKIE, ICON, and Deep Thunder)
Which scenario do I favor? I don’t want to commit to one since a slight shift at this range makes all the difference, as of now I’m leaning towards a blend of scenarios 1 and 2.
Longer version:
We are finally entering into a true winter pattern which has been missing all winter. You can thank the sudden stratospheric warming event that occurred a few weeks ago for this. The Polar Vortex along with the Pacific are finally in better alignment to bring cold temperatures and winter weather to our area. The first stage of this potential event comes on Friday when an area of low pressure passes through our region. This low pressure will bring either some light rain or snow to the area (I’m favoring snow). What this low does after it passes through our region is critical to what happens next. It’s all a matter of how strong or weak the low is, which will cause trickle down effects throughout the atmosphere across the United States. Once the low passes through, it sets the stage for the storm that will develop over the Southwest early on Saturday. Track one brings the low across the South and exits it off the coast somewhere between Southern New Jersey and the Delmarva, and track up the coast. The other track that it could take would be Northeastward across the country and end up passing somewhere just over or to the West of NYC. The track is critical to the type of precipitation and event that we will experience on Sunday. The critical feature in all this is whether the northern stream/polar vortex phases with the energy moving across the South. The difference in timing is about 6 hours on the models for those that phase the energy and those that don’t. Either way, after the storm passes through the area we will experience the coldest weather of the season with temperatures likely dropping into the single digits overnight Sunday into Monday.
There is a whole lot of time to go with this storm, and a shift in the track of 50-100 miles (Model error can be up to 300 miles at this range) will make a significant difference in the weather that we will experience this weekend.