One Messy Storm Deserves Another?

One snow/ice/slop fall out of the way … and now on to #2. 

This coming one for Wednesday will be the larger of the two.  The last forecast worked out very well and becomes a good basis for Wednesday’s storm. Why is that?   Nothing has fundamentally changed in the pattern. The same flow that brought Sunday’s will bring Wednesday’s system.  

Notes:

1. We will have stronger cold air support with a strong high-pressure system to our NE over Maine. This is a great location to lock in cold air and give us snow …
2. A powerful surge of warm moist air will be pointed right at us. This push of warm air will be stronger than Sundays storm.
3. Stronger cold air support battling against stronger warm moist air surge leads to a similar timing scheme like we had on Sunday. 

I am sticking with a 50% snow and 50% ice/rain ratio for this storm leading to this forecast:

• Heavy snow Wed morning from 5 am – 9 am.
• Snow changing to sleet/freezing rain after 9 am, but perhaps as late as 11 am.  
• Ice changing to plain rain by 1 pm and ending by 4 pm.
• Total snow: 3-5” [Very hesitant here. Lots of reasons to go with 5-7”, but my gut says that warm air will scream in faster even though the snowfall may be quite heavy. Thus, the lower amount.]
• Total ice: Up to a ¼” of ice on trees/lines etc. [Won’t be any higher as air will warm to 33 or 34 by midafternoon and then stay there before falling later at night.]
• Total precipitation of snow/ice/rain combined: 1 – 1 ¼”

 
What could go wrong:

• Cold air holds on longer than expected leading to a ½” to 3” more depending on how long it holds. (QUITE POSSILE, but not forecast at this time)
• Snow is very heavy and fluffier than forecast, giving us 1-3” more snow (POSSIBLE, but not likely).
• Warm air surges faster and stronger changing us to ice and rain much earlier than forecast (UNLIKELY)
• Precipitation is light and gives us low snow amounts (VERY UNLIKELY)

 
After this storm, we have a repeat of Monday and Tuesday’s weather (in the general sense) for Thursday and Friday.  Then another storm arrives for Saturday, and this one may be more wet than white, but my confidence in this is rather low at this time. The models have been overstating the northward movement of storms of late. For example, a few days ago the models had Wed’s storm as all rain. I never fell for it, but for the weekend storm … I am uncertain. Some shifts will occur with the flow of the pattern … so things may turn out differently. But we can focus on that once past this storm on Wed.

Until then, Enjoy!