Tuesday: Looking the Same

I recommend reading my post yesterday. I explain why I am not bullish on big snow for the coastal cities this weekend despite some models showing a big storm in some cases. In summary it has to do with a combination of no cold air and the wrong upper air setup. Best case scenario for areas near coast is a offshore storm that just scrapes the area with light snow. Anything strong will mean interior snow.

Latest models are currently favored to the more out to sea track...

Given the setup, this storm can range form what you see above to an inland storm that hits New England. The middle ground of coastal snow needs to be a perfectly threaded needle.

You can see how model ensembles (main models inputs varied and rerun multiple times to test for possible error) show a spread of solutions. Notice how coastal snow is few and far between ..

This is basically like a roulette wheel for the coasts. Its possible but you need to hit your number.

I am not sure if I am on the out to sea or inland train at this time. Tomorrow morning I will likely give my first idea of what I think happens. 

Looking into the long range, there are some silver linings. Models have been trying to show some stress inflicted onto the polar vortex...

If and when this happens it potentially could finally allow sustainable cold air to come into the pattern by Mid Feb into March. The problem is we do not know if this will verify. The polar vortex has been very resilient this winter so far. This is the single most important factor to watch at this time. Usually, what happens way up there in the stratosphere works its way down to the main levels of the atmosphere 2-3 weeks later.


The polar vortex currently looks very strong like this locking all the cold air up north...

Stay tuned.