Good Tuesday Afternoon. We continue to monitor two weather systems for the late week and early weekend that could come together and produce more wintery precipitation across the area.
We have talked about the split-flow and how it is always conducive to producing winter storms on the east coast. Thursday a piece of energy will dive south, following the Northern jetstream. A cold front will cross the area Thursday and stall somewhere near, along, or just off the southeast coast. That front could bring isolated, to widely scattered, light rain showers to the area Wednesday Night and Thursday. The southern jetstream will produce low pressure along that front in the Gulf of Mexico. That low pressure will ride north along the frontal boundary Friday and Saturday. The low pressure will produce a shield of precipitation to it’s west. Just how far west is yet to be determined. That is dependent on how far southeast that front gets before it stalls. If the front is able to move off the east coast, that would mean little to no precipitation for us. However, if that front stalls along the coast or just on shore that would drastically increase the precipitation over the area.
With this frontal system passing and cold arctic air settling in, it will be much different that the system that impacted our area Sunday. There will not be an upper low tracking over the Blue Ridge so there wouldn’t be any warm air advection aloft. That means precipitation would fall as all snow across the area.
Model War – The GFS has the front making it further off the southeast coast. It is also indicates a much weaker system. It does produce light snow back over our area all day Friday. Totals would be very light and this scenario would be a lower impact event.
The Euro is all in however. This model pushes a front through the region earlier on Wednesday Night and stalls it along the coast. The system is also modeled to be stronger on this model. This produces a lot of precipitation that would fall as heavy snow over our area starting Thursday Evening. This model has been consistent with the track and timing.
Our Forecast – We will start Wednesday Night with rain showers across the area. That front clears the area Thursday Morning, and stalls right along the coast. We have carried snow in the forecast starting late Thursday Night and lasting through the day Friday. It should start to taper off Friday Night into Saturday Morning. This system will bring cold temperatures back to the area with highs Friday struggling to get to freezing.
Stay tuned. We will have further updates tonight. The forecast package tonight will likely be released around 9pm tonight.
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Another very informative update! Thank You.