Good morning atmosphere audience! After two days to view trends, models, and atmosphere gears since my last post I wanted to jump back on to give you my thoughts on timing, track, type and totals. While this massive system, covering nearly 1,700 miles from Amarillo to Augusta, ME, I’ll review 3 coverage areas: the Carolinas, Tri-state area and New England.
Now that the all the players are on the field (per graphic above) with the shortwave from the Alberta “Arctics” and the low pressure from Baja “Blizzards”, they converge at the line of scrimmage (boundary) where the game begins. Too bad the Pats aren’t playing in Foxboro. Ok, enough about football.
I will say even with 2 days to go, there’s conflicting details. On 1 side, warmer temps in the upper levels could produce more sleet keeping down snow totals, especially around the tri-state. Don’t think that’s being taken into account.
However, given colder temps snow ratios will be greater than the usual 10-1 ratio (1″ of liquid = 10″ of snow) which means many models could be wrong. So this is complex setup. In the end, it’s a major storm, especially for the I95 cities, but I’d avoid getting caught up in all the high totals being thrown around on your apps, news, etc. Ok, let’s get to it.
Carolina’s
For a majority of SC and NC, ex coastal sections, a Winter Storm Watch is in effect from 7am Sat to 1pm Sun. This Watch should be upgraded to Warning shortly. Sleet and freezing rain move into NW SC and NW NC between appx 7-10pm Saturday, tapering off early to late afternoon on Sunday. The latest 00z run of the Euro has modestly less sleet accretion but enough to still be concerned about. I’d still plan for widespread power outages, and major tree damage from this storm. While the below forecasted accumulated freezing rain totals maybe too high, there will be enough on the trees and lines to cause problems.
While difficult to narrow down exact towns and counties with the highest risk, models seem to be fairly consistent with the NW corner of SC from Clemson to Greer on down to Columbia. For NC if your east of Greenville, you should be ok. But the rest of the state, especially west of Raleigh to the Tennessee border and Virginia border appear to be the main culprits for higher ice totals. Winds will be gusting up to 20-30mph Saturday night into Sunday, not helping matters. In the likelihood for outages, temps will be the 20s Sat night, 30s during the day on Sunday, mid to upper 30s Monday, but unfortunately dropping into the teens overnight Monday. 40s Tues/Wed. Hopefully it’s back before the end of the week where the mercury drops in the teens and single digits next Fri/Sat.
Tri-State Area
As usual, the tri-state area is difficult to forecast covering close to 20 million people on a virtual postage stamp. Ocean temperatures always play a part with mountains to the west. Plus a 50 mile move west or east of a storm can be the difference between a couple of inches and a foot in any snowstorm. Temperatures will be in the teens during the storm on Sunday. Higher levels of the atmosphere, as mentioned earlier will bring in sleet and freezing rain, especially along coastal sections of NJ and Long Island. Once you get to NNJ lower Hudson Valley on North, it’s all snow.
As far as timing is concerned, the storm is moving from the lower left to the upper right entering southern New Jersey overnight Saturday into early Sunday morning. Precip will start as all snow transitioning to sleet and freezing rain from approximately route 78 on South later in the afternoon into the evening hours on Sunday. Storm moves northeast into New England, tapering off across the tri-state before you wake up Monday morning. Temperatures will be mainly in the teens for most of the day Sunday, rising into the 30s in southern and coastal New Jersey. Here’s my thoughts on snow totals across the area:
SENJ (Cape May to Beach Haven): 3-6″
CNJ (Trenton to Rumson) 4-8″
NJ (I78 on North) 10-15″
NYC (5 boroughs) 6-10″
LI (Nassau and Suffolk) 6-10″
Hudson Valley (Newburgh 2 New Paltz) 12-18″ (Oneonta 15-20″)
New England (Mass/NH/ME)
Snow begins to fall across southeast Mass between 9am and 12pm, including Boston, and around noon across New Hampshire and Maine. Snowfall gets steady and heavier throughout the evening hours into Monday morning. As I mentioned in my last post, a secondary low off the coast may regenerate accumulating snow on the backside on Monday. It’ll be gusty and brutally cold. Not a day to travel and more than likely schools will be likely closed Monday and travel will come to a halt. Here are my thoughts on totals:
SE Mass 8-12″
Boston 12-15″
S NH (Keene, Durham to Dover) 12-18″
C NH (Concord to Meredith) 10-15″
Whites 8-13″ (isolated higher amts)
I won’t go over the frigid temperatures in detail again given I’ve covered that topic twice on my last two posts. You can click on these two links to review them at your leisure: Trifecta Winter Event and Siberian Shivers to Frozen Pipes. Bottom line, the coldest temps in many years invade the Northeast starting tomorrow morning ahead of the storm. Besides brutal morning lows, how’s single digit highs sound? Brutal week ahead temperature wise which is exacerbated due to the snow on the ground.
Once again, check your pipes, slow drip your sinks and open the cabinets underneath the sinks that are exposed to outside walls. Plus check on your elderly neighbors if power goes out.
One last interesting fact that’s been making the rounds on social media. Every decade on the sixes there’s been a major blizzard/snowstorm since going back to 1956 (see tweet below, if you don’t have X you can still watch it).
Speaking of 6’s, who remembers 2016??See totals above. That’s it for now. I’ll be back if I see any changes that are significant. Otherwise, they’ll be some busts in some areas and overachievers in others. I’ll provide snow totals on my next post as well as on X. Lastly, I’m still sniffing out another major storm (it’s déjà vu all over again) at the end of next week). Ok, time for a few hours of sleep, as we all know, weather NEVER sleeps!!
Hi. Does this very cold weather affect the melting ice in the arctic?
Thank you Gregg, very informative. Be careful up in your neck of the woods.