Saturday Night: Preliminary Storm Forecast for Monday Afternoon-Tuesday Morning

A winter storm will impact the region Monday late afternoon into Tuesday morning. This will be a mixed bag of precipitation with potential signifigant ice impacts for areas to the NW of I-95. A lot can still change with this system but below is how I see things playing out.

Here is my impact map. I will update this daily up to the event:

We have a complicated situation where cold air will hold at the surface but warm air will work in aloft. This means we will have an initial burst of snow late Monday afternoon which will change over to rain and all freezing rain for the red zone.

Here is how I see it playing out:

• Blue Zone: Mostly snow Monday night several inches possible

• Red Zone: Significant icing event possible with a few inches of snow Monday late afternoon changing to all freezing rain Monday night. We may see up to 0.5" of ice in the worst case scenario.

• Pink Zone: Some snow and mixed precipitation to start Monday late afternoon changing to some freezing rain but then all rain by early Tuesday. Some ice accumulations are possible

• Green Zone: Mostly Rain

Here is the situation. All images are from European model because it has the best handle on this imo.

  A cold high pressure will be to the north of our area on Monday funneling in very cold air at the surface...

The storm system then approaches from the southwest. It will initially be cold enough in all levels of the atmosphere for snow to breakout for a few hours in northern zones late Monday afternoon...

Sleet and some freezing rain will move into areas more south.

Then things can get very hazardous as warm air moves in aloft but cold air hangs tight at the surface for areas to the NW of I-95 by late Monday night .This is due to that cold high still supporting winds from the northeast at the surface...

Surface temps at the same time...

This can cause heavy freezing rain to breakout and really impact the dark red zone from my impact map. I expect areas near coasts, central NJ and the Big cities to not see much impacts from this however.

The historical analogs support freezing rain as seen by orange colors....

Stay tuned, a lot can change. Next update tomorrow morning.