Wednesday Morning Update: Strong Prolonged Storm to Impact Region Thurs-Sat

Good morning. I have put together an initial impact map for Thursday-Saturdays's storm system. This will be a long duration event and have big impacts across the interior Northeast as well as on the coast with high surf and strong winds.

Above is my initial estimate on what this long duration system can do. All areas start as rain Thursday night then snow should start to breakout in the mountains of New England, especially NY State(purple zone).

 For areas in the dark blue zone in the northern Mid-Atlantic, rain will continue a little longer but then change to snow in the higher elevations (above 1000ft) then IF the storm deepens enough will change to snow across the whole dark blue area. 

For the light blue area this is mostly rain but there is a chance this can change to some snow as the storm pulls away Friday night into Saturday morning. 

Recent projections of this storm echo my concern that this storm will linger near the coast. The storm loop below is from Thursday afternoon to Saturday afternoon...

You can see the rain changing to snow and the long duration of this event as the low does a loop over the area. This is due to the dynamics of the storm pulling down cold air that is up in the atmosphere to the surface. Another more major concern of mine is coastal impacts as winds and surf will batter the New England coast for a prolonged period of time seen below...

In addition, the long duration of this will really blast a few areas with very impressive snowfall amounts. I am thinking the Catskills and Southern Green Mountains of VT can see easily over a foot of snow with this if not 2 feet plus.

The reason this storm is stalling out is because of a massive block of high pressure to the north as seen over Greenland...

Storm get trapped under it and just lingers.


There are still a lot of details that need to be working out with this. I am confident in the snow for the Mtns of New England but for areas in the dark blue zone, the jury is still out. In NNJ and northern PA for example, at the higher elevations, a 6"+ accumulation would not surprise me . For other areas, your best shot is a few inches at the end of this storm.


Big update tonight around 6pm. I will also be finalizing my map as the storm approaches.