Tuesday Morning Weather Discussion: Little Bit of Everything This Week

Good morning. This week will be quite interesting as we will see a little bit of every type of weather from cold, to warm, to ice, to snow, to rain. We are currently on the back end of a very cold air mass that has been flowing through our region since last week. Warm air moves in tonight causing some mixed precipitation and a little snow to the north before changing to all rain. That will cause temperatures tomorrow and Thursday to be in the 50s! Things then change again as a cold front approaches the area at the end of this week. In its wake we get more warm air trying to attack the new cold air on Saturday which actually can cause some snow/ice for the weekend in northern counties. Lets take a look..


Mixed precip initially tonight as warm air moves into region and the colds hangs tough..

Temperatures should rise fairly quickly and most areas all see rain after some snow and ice in NNJ and surrounding areas this evening. The area is actually under a Winter Weather Advisory because of this.

In the wake of this warm front, temperatures really climb tomorrow and Thursday. I expect highs in the 50's for mostly all areas. Im sure many of you will welcome that (not me).

A cold front then approaches on late Thursday bringing with it the chance at a quick shower.

In the wake of this cold front we have a massive high pressure system that gets established moving in from our west..

That is a 1046MB high, very strong stuff. This is where things get concerning. Strong higsh like that love to hold in cold air especially near the surface. We will have warm air try to attack this high pressure on Saturday which has the chance to cause some snow for northern counties and ice as shown below..

As the warm air moves in from the west it runs over the cold air causing snow initially. As the warm air overwhelms the cold air aloft the snow changes to ice. The issue will be however that at the surface the cold might really want to linger. That can cause some icing concerns. We are going to have to watch this very closely. A few inches of snow are definitely possible for areas of PA, NJ, into New England Saturday.

This will all come down to the nature of how the upper air disturbances align. We will have a big closed off low pressure system in the southwest and pieces of energy will try to break off of this and move into the region. It all depends on the magnitude and strength of these disturbances regarding how we are effected. Below you can see what I am talking about..

Notice pieces of yellow breaking off the main vortex in the SW. These disturbances cause lift in the atmosphere and precipitation. If we get a stronger than modeled disturbance to eject faster and run into that big high pressure I talked about watch out we could have something bigger on the horizon. I am not ready to make a call on this yet but it is something we have to monitor closely.

More to come!