Monday: Welcome to Winter, Tracking Weekend Storm Hype

Good morning. I say welcome to winter because our pattern change is now noticeably underway.We had our first real cold weekend of the winter and there is going to be a lot more were that came from over the next several weeks.

Today I will be focusing on a potential storm threat for this weekend. There has been alot of hype on the internet and the weather bot apps (as I call them) have been showing heavy snowfall. Is any of this true? 

At this time at storm is coming this weekend, but I am skeptical if there is enough cold air ahead of it to bring snow down to the I-95 corridor and south. From what I am seeing, the interior may be favored with the setup. 

I will explain below...

We will start this week with fairly seasonable weather with highs in the mid to upper 30's. The story starts with a light to moderate low pressure system that sweeps through the area Thursday night into Friday...

With this system, a few inches of snow will fall in New England and potentially as far south as NNJ and PA.

This is an important storm system for our weekend threat as depending on how this develops has a lot to do with how much cold air is available ahead of the weekend storm...

Above is the cold air in the wake of Friday's system. Notice it is draped over the Mid-Atlantic with a low pressure center developing just to the Northeast of Texas. How established this cold air is is key to where this low pressure center to the Northeast of texas tracks. 

The low or storm will want to form and track along the natural boundry of warm and cold arctic air seen below...

The question is however, where does this boundary set up. It is more to the NW , SE? That determines where the winter precip is and were the rain is. The cool thing here is to the west of this boundary there is true bitterly cold arctic air in the single digits! That would mean who ever sees snow its is a cold powdery snowstorm. My favorite type!

Looking further up in the atmosphere here are the major players on the field to develop the weekend storm to ride along where ever this boundary sets up...

Notice how we have a lot of energy on the field from the pacific and true arctic (north pole) energy and air potentially combining with it. One of the bigger factors that will determine how these two circles interact will be how much blocking or high pressure forms near Greenland which  does have a lot to do with how that moderate storm on Friday behaves. See how this is all connected?

The stronger Friday's storm is, the more cold air it pulls in which as I mentioned sets up that boundary or front for the storm to ride along.

On the other extreme end, if the cold air arrives ahead of the pacific energy then we get a suppressed storm out to sea. So as always guys this is never easy.

So lets get to what may happen here.

The American and to a certain extent the European model are bullish on a major snow event for just NW of I-95 into New England Sat night into Sunday...

You can see the low riding that boundary up the coast.

Now the Canadian shows what happens if that boundary is not established properly...

More rain due to storm cutting more west. I don't think this extreme occurs but I do think the solution lies in the middle based on this setup.

Due to the fact there is no major blocking to lock the cold cold air in ahead of the storm, here is the impact zone I would expect based on analogs or historical setups that looked similar...

The hotter the color the more likely for snow. Translation, at this time the focus is more NW of I-95 and big cities.

More to come on this.