WINTER OUTLOOK 2023 IS NOW LIVE

The 2023 Winter Outlook

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Thursday Night Storm Discussion: Do we have a storm to discuss?

Very complicated weather set up that is heading out way for late this weekend into early next week. To simplify things the best possible it involves two parts:

Part 1: Overrunning precipitation associated with an upper level disturbance coming in on the pacific jet. This causes snow to break out on Sunday in many areas to the north over New York State, VT, NH and Maine. 


Circled above you can see the upper level disturbance entering the region on Sunday. At this surface it looks like below..


This is my take on the first part..



Now we head onto part two which is extremely complicated.  The question basically comes down to- does a low pressure system develop on the arctic front that swings through from part one. The models will be a mess with this projection because quite frankly there is so much going on.

Moving back up to 18000ft I circled all the different disturbances in the atmosphere at that time valid Monday night..


As anyone can see this is an enormous amount of variables for the models to process esepcially considering a lot of these variables are still out in the pacific ocean with limited sampling!! My point here is that the models are really going to shift around a lot when it comes to will we see a bigger storm develop on Monday.

Right now the models are saying low pressure develops but effects areas to the north more than the south as warm air is allowed to filer in. The storm then doesn't really explosively deepen and drifts off shore.


This is def a possibility, but I am more concerned with how this can change considering we know it will. To me it all comes down to how the final shortwave amplifies. 

Will there be enough blocking in the Atlantic to allow it to amplify and consolidate all the energy into one storm? 

Will a second shortwave behind it break down the ridge and cause the pattern to speed up?

These are all questions I am trying to figure out right now and I need better data sampling from the models before I can do that. 

In simple terms again, the more energy or blue we have bundled in the image below the better..


Once we nail that evolution down then we can look at a second aspect which is how much cold air is in the southern zones..


How all those disturbances align will answer all those questions as they influence high (cold air suppliers) and low pressure systems at the surface. For now this is as far as I am willing to go..



I would be making a total guess otherwise. You guys know I am all about trying to take a stance and be aggressive, but in this case I need a little more time. Hopefully by tomorrow night I will have seen enough data and trends to make a preliminary call. 



No comments:

Post a Comment