Friday Morning Weather Discussion: Some Snow for Ski Country, Rain Elsewhere

Good morning everyone. Latest model guidance is fairly consistent with yesterday regarding tomorrow's storm. Most areas will see rain move into late tonight/early tomorrow morning and last into the afternoon. Up in VT, NH, ME and mountains of NY State snow will accumulate a few inches with locally higher amounts in certain mountain areas. We also need to watch next weekend for a true big city snow threat. 

Here is the storm very early tomorrow morning..

As we get to mid morning you can see the snow break out below for ski areas below. Notice also the rain has pulled out of NJ area. This is what I meant when I said the storm will be more of a quick hitter so impacts will be more limited than originally thought. 

When it is all said and done I like the NAM models snow output..

In the wake of this storm more bitter arctic air moves in for next week..

For all of next week temps will struggle to get past freezing. This will be an impressive air mass. 

Then comes more drama. At this time all models are flashing a strong storm signal for next weekend. Yes, I know nothing has panned out so far this year and every storm that has shown up never happened but the set up once again is very ripe.

Storms love to form on the back of big arctic outbreaks especially for the big city areas. The key is does the arctic air stay in place long enough for the storms arrival. Right now all the major models ENSEMBLES which are the Canadian, European and GFS all show this storm running into all this arctic air. You can see this below..

On top left image is the European ensemble. Notice the low pressure center almost identical to the other images and the blue or cold air over the whole area. This would result in a major snowfall for Mid-Atlantic. 

The key is how do we hold in this cold air. Well I show below..

The key to all of this is holding the cold air in place. The only way that happens is if we see a vortex or low pressure center over the red circled area. If that is not there, the HP would be allowed to slide out to sea and the storm would bring in warm air. 

We also do not want this storm to be too slow. The slower it is to arrive the greater chance the cold air has to leave.

In reality this might be our best shot so far this season but I urge a big word of caution. The models are really struggling this year with all the energy that is on the field (from the el nino). We only can speculation right now and see how this trends. 

Thanks for reading.