The Final Christmas Forecast: Adjustments Made

Merry Christmas everyone! Above is my final forecast for tonight's storm system. Snow will start late tonight for areas north and west of I-95 and start as rain for all other areas SE. Some mixing then occurs in the 1-2" zone before it goes back to all snow between 4-7am for all areas in light blue. For the Interior (darker colors), this will be an all snow event with moderate accumulations Christmas morning. 

The reason for the reduction in accumulations is a tongue of warm air that will move in aloft tonight...

This will change any initial snow to mixed/rain. As the cold air sweeps in again behind the storm snow then falls again to end the event. I wish I had better news guys but the weather will always do what it wants.

Remember, earlier this week the models had no storm. The storm ended up developing as I expected and discussed in my videos, but we got too much of a good thing. This will wrap up too close to the coast which is why the warm air gets pulled in. How ironic! The weather will always be a great challenge. 

However, models are indicating that a strong band of snow can develop just before daybreak for areas that see the rain and mixing. You can see below that they have been fairly consistent (image shows past several model runs 5am Christmas morning) with projecting this band...

This is the reasoning behind the 1-2 inches. If this occurs things whiten up just before daybreak! Lets see what happens.



I am still watching a potential storm system for later next week. The details are still unclear and I will likely have a post dedicated to this tomorrow.