Thursday's Weather Update: The Final Weekend Forecast

Good morning everyone. Well now that we are 48 hours out I need to try to make a finalized call for the weekend storm system. I think we all saw clear trends yesterday to take this storm out to sea. This has frustrated me as my normal methods of identifying trends 4 days out have failed this time. The main points of this discussion are:

• The very strong coastal storm has trended more east in the last 24 hours
• This means impacts will be reduced compared to originally thought
• Some rain should still fall Saturday for the whole region but move through quickly 
• Up in New England snow is still possible but much lesser amounts  (few inches could fall)
• There are still some models that insist this is a little more intense and closer to the coast
• I can not make that my base case given all the other data I am looking at
• We will have to see if any last second trends develop on that front today
• In the wake of this storm system we have a slight chance at another coastal storm Sunday
• This is a low probability right now
• In the long range next weekend gives us another shot at active winter weather
• The pattern is not changing to warm anytime soon

Here is an updated look at some models. For the most part they all support a graze by our area (some rain Saturday)..

The ensembles (an ensemble is taking these main models and varying the initial inputs to test for error) agree with this. You can see below the low pressure centers are similar...

What changed in the last 24 hours? Well the interaction between the northern and southern jet stream is not as strong. This is shown below..

I circled both pieces of energy and if you compare to old runs, you can see how now they are more separate . This allows storm to drift off more to the east. Here is an old run below..

Notice how you cant even identify the two pieces on old image because they are fully phased right over Long Island area.

Now believe it or not the same model that started this trend last night, the European, is now the most aggressive with this storm by deepening this energy a little more than all the other models. This would mean more rain and some snow for New England. Its own ensembles however average out a low pressure center that is more to the east. At this rate I am not going to rule out anything. We still need to keep the door slightly open for this to back in a little more that what the consensus shows. In any event its made a huge flip since its run on Tuesday showing an intense system hugging the coast seen below.

Moving on there is chatter about another storm threat for Sunday into Monday..

The pattern looks at first like it could support this BUT I do not like seeing this below..

Great potential with the northern and southern stream interacting BUT that short wave or energy out to the west I think keeps this flow progressive and kicks this out to sea. That really I think is the problem with this whole pattern. We have great conditions over the top near Greenland but the pacific jet is still so strong so much energy is coming onto the field at once that it keeps everything moving along like a train. 

I will keep watching this but I am not very impressed yet with this threat. Lets see if this changes over next few days.

In the very long range all models are indicating another shot at a storm for next weekend..

very good potential here with cold air actually being locked in place. However these models have been horrendous this year in the long range lets just see how this plays out. 

This cold active pattern is here to stay through February. That I am very confident in. Now we just really need a storm here or it all goes to waste. I am not giving up yet we still have 7 good weeks of winter left. The pattern should eventually deliver. 

Thanks for reading lets see where things trend today.