Wednesday: Tracking Big Storm for Sunday Night into Monday

 Good morning. It looks like the storm threat I have been watching will materialize for the east coast Sunday night into Monday. As always, we never will know the exact details this far out, but there is enough data to make some initial estimates and adjust from there. At this time It appears this is a storm that will produce heavy snow for interior areas and mixing and plain rain for some coastal areas. Regardless, this storm should be quite strong meaning impacts along the whole eastern seaboard.

Here is my initial estimate of impacts. This is very early in the game so I kept things very general...

The biggest question with this storm system if this low pressure system amplifies very early and gets pulled westward. If that happens the storm has a very big warm sector that will be associated with it. Right now some models are very aggressive with this and the result is heavy snow only being limited to far interior areas. I am not buying this scenario 100%. When I look at the setup vs history and the very very cold air that will be ahead of this system. I am currently thinking that this storm tracks just off the immediate coast. This means mixing, and plain rain on the coasts but heavier winter precipitation just off the coasts. My map above represents this.

Lets take a look...

Right now models are very spread on the placement of this low pressure system. They always are this far out, need to look past this and try to estimate what will happen...

You can see above many different scenarios for where this storm center could be. The scenarios to the west are warmer the ones to the east are colder. I like the track that goes just off the coast of NJ which is left center of the center of the green circle above.

Right now some models are very aggressive with the westward track...

I think this is overdone. There will be some of the coldest air of the season ahead of this storm on Sunday due to high pressure to our north....

Even if this storm tries to develop by early, I am still thinking it will not completely erode all of this cold and that the models are overestimating the warming. What I think happens is the low tries to redevelop just off the coast.

This is complex to predict right now. In the upper atmosphere, there are some complex interactions that have to be modeled to dictate this track...

Without getting too complicated, any difference on how each red circle is modeled has big impacts on the track of this system. If the 2nd polar disturbance really trys to catch the main storm energy early then the warm scenario has more merit as the whole atmosphere basically shifts west. 

Looking at history this is where historical cases have snowed the most with setups like this seen in orange and red...

This makes sense to me. The key will be if over next 24 hours we see a major western pull. If that happens then we will be discussing more wet than white. I do not think that occurs at this time.

Stay tuned for updates.