Wednesday: First Look at Possible Interior Snow Saturday

These are interesting times. A true arctic air mass will be approaching the region on Saturday. As this air mass approaches low pressure will try to develop on its boundary and potentially move up the coast.  Now remember it is May and although it has snowed before in May the surface air is still going to be marginal for most areas ex the high elevations. Regardless this is a very interesting setup.  

If the storm does end up tracking up coast, I can see areas from the Catskills to the southern Green Mountains of VT/Berkshires getting accumulating snow with at least a trace of snow in the higher elevations of NW NJ, CT and the Poconos on Saturday early morning. Given its my birthday Saturday, that would be some present!


Lets take a look...

On Friday night air directly from the North Pole approaches the area...

This is extremely impressive for this time of year. What you are looking at is  a piece of the troposphereic polar vortex moving into the Northeast. In English this means the coldest air in the northern hemisphere moves into the Northeast directly from the North Pole. Low temps will be near freezing for many this weekend. 

As this occurs, energy coming in off the pacific will try to round the southern flank of this arctic air mass and develop a storm...

Now here is where the uncertainty comes into play. Because it is not the winter, we would need perfect placement of that vortex of cold air from the north pole to cause a snowy scenario.

If it is too far northwest the storm is mostly inland and snowing only in the highest peaks. If it is too far south, the storm is kept out to sea. 

The European model above shows the middle ground.

At this time I think the European makes sense and the risk is more west not east with this. The reason is I think there will be more of a natural boundary between warm and cold air that the storm will want to ride along. 

Due to this here is what I think is the best idea of where snow can fall. The below map shows probabilities of snow of at least 1"....

Notice NW NJ in to Poconos is in play here for at least something to fall along with the higher terrain of CT and Mass.


Stay tuned will keep updating on this.