Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Storm Misses South Tonight; Another in our Future?

Wow, we really missed out on a very potent clipper system today that dumped a good stripe of 3-6" from Minnesota to right off the Mid Atlantic coastline. Some areas near Chicago and Milwaukee, WI came in closer to 6-10" with this clipper system. Preliminary reports show that even Washington DC came in with about 3" of snowfall today. Well, that missed and our eyes move to our next chance of some snowfall and that would be on Friday afternoon, mainly during the overnight hours. First, we have got to get there. Tomorrow will be more of the same, another brutally cold day for early December. Temepratures will likely stay in the upper 20's to around 30 degrees tomorrow across SNE. Early morning lows will likely range from the upper single digits to upper teens in the cities tonight. Then Friday, the clouds will increase during the afternoon and we will likely see some light snow commence sometime after dark Friday night. The snow will start from west to east, but as it hits the coast near the Cape, the storm will intensify rapidly and this could enhance the precipitation over southeasten Massachusetts. The unfortunate fact here is that this area may be just a bit too warm for a pure snow event. There will likely be some mixing with rain, especially down on the Cape. Closer to Boston, there could be a period of some light snow and flurries, with all of this collapsing SE as the main storm gets going over the ocean, robbing our moisture.

That will move out and modify temperatures for this weekend. We may even get closer to normal on Saturday with highs getting back into the low 40's, perhaps. The normal high for this date is about 44 degrees, so a couple degrees below normal will feel mild compared to what we have been going through. We cool a bit on Sunday and then we get into a messy storm situation for early next week. There will be multiple ripples of low pressure along a nationwide frontal system that will need to be watched. The cold air will be just to our north and if any one storm can tap into it, we could be talking of a snowstorm around these parts, but for now, I will play it conservative and say that it will stay mostly wet than white. Any snow would be confined to ski country, where they will take all they can get.

More on that complex early week weather situation tomorrow, even more likely this weekend, after discussing our possible light snow for Friday night. No need to post accumulation maps, but just keep it in the back of your mind if you have dinner plans Friday night and see a little festive snowfall, just to remind us that there are under 20 shopping days left.

1 comment:

E.H. Boston said...

Yeah, there is a type for Sunday...no light snow in the morning...that should say clouds developing or something to that sort.