Wednesday Morning Weather Discussion: Coldest Air of Season This Weekend, Storm to Follow?

Good morning everyone. Now that we have gotten past the snow event that wasn't, lets turn our focus on the next leg of this winter pattern we are currently in. When you walk outside you door this weekend it will feel like you are up in the arctic circle, not the eastern USA. This is all due to air that originates from that region delivered by our friend the polar vortex..

How cold will it get? I will put it to you this way, Friday will be the warmest day with temps in the 20's. By the time we get to Saturday and Sunday temps will not even hit 20 in many areas for highs! Sunday will be the coldest day with early morning temps potentially going below zero seen below...

Highs on Sunday will be in the low to upper teens. Welcome to winter!

In the wake of this massive cold surge, I have my eye on potential storm development on the heals of this arctic out break. I am not ready to jump on this yet, but anytime I see storms trying to develop on the back of a major arctic outbreak it sparks my attention. 

I try to show how this can develop in image above. We have our vortex of cold air starting to move out of the area early next week. Directly behind it we have energy that will try to dig down into the region and develop a storm. The major question is where does this energy want to consolidate. If it starts to amplify too early then we have a storm that tracks inland with snow to ice to rain. On the other hand if we get this energy to consolidate a little later then we have a storm that moves right off the coast. 

The models are still split on what scenario occurs. You can see the spread of different low pressure centers below for the middle of next week..

Now I do think we see a storm I just am not ready to speculate on if the tri state sees major impact yet. Most major models do agree this energy consolidates and the trough goes into a negative tilt. A negative tilt indicates a storm is able to intensify..

The issue is does this consolidate too early like I mentioned before. That would cause the inland running scenario which would be a snow to ice to rain scenerio. We need to wait a few days to sort this out.

In any event, I find it hard to believe we see just a big rainstorm when you have such powerful arctic air in front of this storm as you see below...

More on this in the days to come.