Monday: Winter Returns, Snow This Weekend

Good morning. We have a week of transition on tap. Temperatures will be around average all week with a few impulses of snow moving through the mountains of New England Wednesday and Thursday. We then turn our attention to a winter storm that looks to hit the region on Saturday. At first glance this is a front end burst of snow changing over to mixed precip for most of the Mid-Atlantic and mostly all snow for New England. The weather pattern then stays cold and active through next week with the chance for another storm to develop the week of MLK day.

Our period of mild weather is over and the pattern is changing. Temperatures will return to normal and then really start to cool down ahead of an approaching storm system on Friday. Below you can see a big area of high pressure moves into the region on Friday....

This drills very dry dense cold air into the region Friday as seen by dew points in the low to negative digits. Dew points are the temperature the air needs to be for water to condensate. The lower they are the colder and drier the air is. You can see below we have a cold dry air mass in place over the Northeast Friday...

This is critical as we have an approaching storm system from the west moving into the region during this same period (Saturday)...

Because the air is so cold and dry out ahead of this approaching storm, the atmosphere will have no choice but to let it snow for most areas Saturday morning even across MD and southern NJ. You can see this in the image above.

However, as the storm gets closer warm air will win for areas to the south and near the coasts, changing a quick burst of snow to a mix and rain by Saturday afternoon. All snow remains to the north...

I drew an initial impact map below that shows what I think will happen with this...

This is subject to change and I will hone in as we get closer.

After this weekend the pattern then looks to stick around with cold air pooled in the east for MLK week...

I am still keeping my eye on the potential for a storm to develop sometime towards the middle of next week which can feature snow further south than our storm on Saturday.

A lot of winter ahead of us. Stay tuned!