Stormy Times Continue

Stormy weather dominates the headlines for much of the country as we head toward the new year of 2008. As we speak there is a good sized snowstorm dumping over a half foot of snow over Chicago and other parts of the Midwest. That storm will get here after midnight and be a warmer with maybe a brief burst of snow in southern NH that will even quickly change to plain rain there as temperatures warm into the mid and upper 30's. We will see the rain come down pretty heavy for a while with it all winding down sometime early on Saturday morning, before the sun starts to come back out in the afternoon. It won't be a flash freeze situation, temperatures will actually be quite mild, in the lower and middle 40's. It actually looks nice tomorrow afternoon. Then all eyes need to be put down to the Gulf States, namely New Orleans as we watch where our next storm will be coming from.

SUNDAY NIGHT/MONDAY MORNING STORM DISCUSSION: This storm has been on the models forever it seems, and all over the maps. Earlier this week, the GFS had this storm going weakly out to sea in a flat progressive pattern. Today, the GFS is right about ready to go gangbusters for much of the I-95 corridor from DC to Portland, ME. Everywhere from NYC northward to Boston on the latest 12z GFS run would be getting a fairly decent dump of snow on the order of 6"+. Mixing issues will always have to be watched down on the Cape. Sorry guys. But there is another reliable model, not very reliable lately, that takes the storm out to sea, but in the past several runs, it looks to be siding with the more amplified GFS, EURO, and UKMET, and JMA for that matter. That is pretty good agreement in my book.

My concerns with this storm system is that there is no blocking high pressure over SE Canada to stop this NW trend on the models. I see no reason why this won't keep going west, northwest on the next runs, by say 50 miles or more. There is nothing there to stop it. I don't think it will become on Appalachians runner, but if it wants to hug the coast more, then we will have precip type problems in southern New England, especially along the coast. However, with the models the way they are looking right now and the fact that we are heading inside 60 hours for this impending storm, I believe that much of SNE has a good shot at seeing some significant snows Sunday night and ending Monday early afternoon. I will be watching this like a hawk, I can tell you that.

Tonight's 00z and tomorrow's 12z runs will be HUGE as they will pretty much nail the final track of the storm system. Right now I like where we are sitting and am becoming increasingly confident that somewhere in SNE will see a fairly good dump (6"+) from this Nor'easter. I am almost certain that Boston will get that 1.1" to break the all-time snowiest December record of 1970 as well. Not etched in stone just yet, but I'm pretty confident. Maps will start to be posted later today, if not, tomorrow.

One thing is for sure. The skiing this weekend in the north country will be excellent with many resorts reporting the best ski conditions in many many years. Many areas up north picked up between 4-6" of snow yesterday and as we here in SNE get rained on tonight, they will be picking up some more powder. Many ski resorts in northern NH and ME will pick up between 4-8" of snow tonight from this storm system. Northern New England could do well with the storm come Sunday night as well, so you can imagine that the skiing will be excellent.

More on the storm tonight/tomorrow.