Good afternoon Atmospheric audience! To those who celebrate, Happy Chanukah! It has been awhile since my last post but here we are awaiting our next storm on the East Coast. Most of you, I assume are aware of what’s on its way so I just wanted to jump on to provide details on track, timing, type and totals. Plus, aside from hurricane season, winter time is my wheelhouse as many long time followers know. Given we’re 10 days into meteorological winter, I’ll be out with my thoughts for the rest of December (Christmas and New Years), into January and February shortly.
This is a potent front that combines a firehose of precipitation from the south drawing gulf moisture, converging with a strong cold front on the back side. Primary impacts will be flooding rain (2-4″ in spots), powerful to damaging wind gusts (especially along coastal sections), and a dramatic drop in temps from Augusta, Georgia to Augusta, Maine. White gold will definitely be another element of the storm, but any accumulation will be limited to the mountains of ADK, N VT, and N NH (N Grafton and Coos counties). That said, festive flakes could make its way into the tri-state area on Monday.
Temperatures Take a Tumble!
Given the southerly flow (winds coming from the south on front end of storm) will initially drive temperatures into the upper 50s to low 60s (even after dark) today before cratering into the 30s by 7/8am tomorrow morning! Temps will remain in the upper 30s to low 40s for highs on Monday.
Firehose of Flash Flooding Followed by Wild Winds
A literal train of flooding rain from the SW moving NE begins shortly in across NJ/NYC on up to the I95 corridor later this afternoon, becoming steadier and heavier through out the night, tapering off not until tomorrow morning, late morning across the Cape, Boston and Seacoast. Expect a very slow morning commute, especially around the usually hotspots prone to urban flooding. Expect a widespread soaker of 1-4″. There will be a narrow band 3-6″ across central CT and Mass, up I84 from Hartford to Worcester.
Strong to damaging wind gusts (40 upper to 60+ mph), primarily along coastal sections of NJ, LI, CT, RI and especially on the Cape will whip overnight into the morning commute across SE New England. I like the Euro vs stronger NAM model below. Aside from coastal flooding, isolated power outages are a possibility.
As current SW winds rotate out of the NW later tonight into Monday, higher elevations see rain change to accumulating snow, primarily well west of the major cities. Totals vary among short term models but will clearly be elevation dependent. See the latest runs of the Euro and GFS vs the NAM models.
That’s it for now. Once the storm moves out to sea tomorrow, look for dry conditions along with seasonally temperatures the rest of the week (see my compiled almanac of normal high/low and record temps for selected cities). Btw, a number of people ask where I get the main pictures on my post. Unless I give credit to, I take all of them (helps to have over 40,000 pics on my phone!!). I will be posting more regularly in the coming weeks and months as we head into the deep and dark depth’s of winter, my favorite time of year! I am sniffing out a potential east coast storm later next weekend into following week. Stay tuned, stay dry tonight and tomorrow and be patient on the AM commute! Get plenty Z’s tonight because weather never sleeps!
