– Storm impacts Mid-Atlantic Sunday night
– Potential for wet snow… especially in southern portions of the area
– Continued uncertainty surrounding the details and impacts
– Most likely impacts: Coating to 2″ … mainly south of I-84
It’s time for an update to the meteorological madness that has been on full display over the past 36 hours. We’ve been tracking this storm for a week, and about 4 days ago, the European model had this storm crushing the Hudson Valley and northeast with a foot of snow. Then the Euro joined all the other models for the next couple days, keeping the storm well to our south, with nearly no impact to the Hudson Valley. Then suddenly on Friday, several different models suddenly began trying to phase the northern branch energy and southern branch energy… pulling the storm far enough north, to bring snow into parts of the Hudson Valley.
This caused a lot of chaos with the weather forecast community, because the highly populated area between Philadelphia and New York City could see no precipitation… it could see rain… or it could see 6″+ of snow. Ultimately putting one of the busiest regions on earth into a situation where their weather forecast will be determined by a roll of the dice. Not ideal to say the least.
As of Saturday evening, we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in the data. We still have an unusual level of uncertainty 24 hours ahead of the storm. Friday the guidance shifted the northern edge of the snow well to the north, into the Hudson Valley. On Saturday, we saw that northward trend stall out, and the band of snow began to trend slightly further south again. Some data shows a complete miss for our area, while others like the NAM (image shown) still impact the lower half of the region, with a coating to 2 inches of snow.
So, we still have some disagreement that needs to be closely monitored. While unlikely, a minor shift further north could translate into a few inches of snow, and headaches for our Monday AM commute. We’ll be tracking the development into Sunday, so be prepared for the possibility of some minor changes to our Sunday night forecast.