Major Midwest Blizzard on tap-- with a little ice POSSIBLE here.

NAM Snow output- St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo,Boston-- WOW

A simply huge storm is about to unfold that will bring a large swath of snow from Oklahoma to Maine. This map is somewhat over done with the large 20+ inches, but its get the point across that this is a HUGE storm. Just SE of that heavy snow band will be large amounts of sleet and freezing rain. Some of the freezing rain amounts over parts of MO, IN, IL and OH will be crippling.

For our region, the MAIN thrust of rain will be liquid-- however. The data has suggest overnight Monday into Tuesday some light rain and drizzle falls with temps in the 29 to 31 range. These events can be the worst because there won't be much media talk and that THINEST of glaze can be missed before several accidents across the region.

December 7, 2007 we had an event that dropped .01 of freezing drizzle between 6am and 8 am. It was missed by the models and was a traffic nightmare. Oddly, I went to bed around 1 am thinking-- if this doesn't dry up we are going to have a rough AM. And, at some point around 7:30 or so they flashed on the TV-- police recommend every stay off the road until temps warm up. Our high in the afternoon was 41- but temps were below freezing until 11 AM.

Most model data shows between .03 and .05 that starts after midnight tomorrow night and is gone before 10 am. Temps get into the mid 40's or warmer Tuesday afternoon.

Wednesday will be crazy warm-- 60 is very possible and will cool back to the 40's for highs on Thursday. Another storm approaches Saturday, and taking the models at face value, will be warm for region for snow or ice.

Ice Updated-- still minor

Late Monday into Early Tuesday there will be a minor ice threat. As a low pressure develops over East Texas the warm air advection will zoom over the cold dome at the surface and bring us a shot at a little freezing drizzle.
Precipt amounts will be less then .05 of an inch, so the icing will be minor but some traffic concerns early Tuesday. As the low cranks up the bulk of storm is rain here Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Cold air filters in after this event and we are back to seasonal levels. Some most model data suggest that a trailing piece of energy spins a storm up heading into next weekend and we have a threat for some rain or snow. Track at this time is favorable for snow-- temps are the issue.

Mid day ice update--

All model trends have been away from ice. If the moisture doesn't plume to our north before the warm up, we still could see the some minor icing late Monday night and early Tuesday. Liquid amounts are under .05 of an inch on both models I scanned. The small amount of ice could make for rough travel but all data has us well above freezing shortly after mid day.


After this storm, some data suggest a storm goes JUST off shore and misses our area. If it nudges west, we could be looking at a shot at snow. This is in the "not likely, but keep your eyes open" department.

Enjoy the nice warm day- My youngest finally gets to ride his Thomas the Train Big Wheel he received from Santa outside the house this afternoon.

Ice event still looming-- doesn't appear to be significant, but still watching it.

Certainly, I tend to update more when larger events loom. The pending event Tuesday-Wednesday has SOME promise to be a marginal ice event. Some of the early model data had leaned towards a decent snow that changed to sleet and freezing rain, and they've moved to maybe a quick shot of sleet into freezing rain. SOME data shows temps in the upper 20's--which would make for a day of pretty bad travel, but no threat of power outages or down tree limbs.

As of now, I see there being a 6 to maybe 12 hour window where we could get some freezing rain. As the heavier precipitation approaches, we lose our connection to the parent high pressure and the "banana" high (piece that extended) over upstate New York slides out to sea. This is an impressive cold air mass coming down and a slight shift east of that MASSIVE arctic high will greatly influence the storms impact on our region.

Start time as of now is late Monday evening into Tuesday morning. If everything goes well, we are all rain by noon Tuesday.

Will update tomorrow-- As of now, 60% odds this is an advisory level event, 15% warning (.25 of ice or more) and 15% it's a non event.

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Overnight Data Leans Ice

Despite the colder temps---

Our "ideal" snowstorm has a high pressure located over the Eastern Great lakes into Upstate New York. The clockwise flow gives us a steady supply of cold air and forces the system to our south and east. Like this last system, the storm high is exciting well in advance of the storm near Feb 2. This last storm, the high was WELL east and warm air had taken its place and we need the rapidly developing low to cool the atmosphere.

This time, as of now it appears as the high exits the storm approaches but high will be much closer and cold air more available. I'd expect a period of sleet/snow initially with a longer more extended period of freezing rain that possibly ends as rain. There is a STRONG ice signal because often the computer models run a little warm at the surface when we have this type of cold air damming. At this point, one model keeps our temps below freezing the entire event.


4 days out-- still subject to tweaks.

There could be a snowshower this morning that coats the ground quickly.

Paging Vanilla Ice??..and a couple cool photographs.

I'm home from work today with the schools being closed. (What was the deal with Bedford being 2 hours late and waiting till 8:45 to call it off??) and had some fun with my kids.

Scanned the mid day models-- the Feb 2-3 event is on track. First guess is leaning towards sleety icy mess. We've not been able to get the High Pressures in the favorable spot for our region in these big events. This is an evolving storm that is in the 5-6 day window to just keep in mind., We also may see a brief snow shower or two tomorrow AM.

First regional total map for yesterdays event- 75 miles off! My hometown of New Castle DE-- crazy day--- 4 inches of unexpected heavy snow in the morning, a driving rainstorm late afternoon. (about a half inch of rain fell) and back to heavy snow in the evening. Daily total of snow was 10.5 inches.

Thunder snow video-- The tremendous energy aloft supplied many instances of thundersnow-- This is a video from outside Philly. His reaction is classic-- He's clearly a snowfan.

Thundersnow in Philly

Lastly, Cool photo from Tolland, CT. Kevin is a friend of mine that I'm in a fantasy football league. He did all this shoveling by HAND-- over 40 inches since the first of Jan. Looks like 8 foot crests?

On second review-- and a glimpse into the future.

Today was a fail-- I went back and checked out the obs and reality is we did get the banding set up as I expected, the temps were just a little too warm, especially the snow growth region ( Between 6-10k feet give or take). I had a mushy inch or so that weighed a ton when I had a snowball fight with my children. ( They are 6, 3 and 2-- so really it was I made them a snowball and they in turn threw it at me)

We did get some much need precipitation-- .90 from the rain/sleet and snow combined. About .40 fell as snow. Sadly, because the temp profiles were a tad warm, we had bad crystal growth and they melted fast into that mush of an inch. I use a tool called bufkit-- which does a vertical view of the clouds that tells what types of flakes are going to fall and how will they accumulate. While not an exact science, its a tool to be listened too-- the best it ran as I tracked this event was 3.8 inches. My belief that it was wrong was wrong-- while it often gave us no accumulation due to a rain snow mix, it did note the poor snow growth.

Adding the hourly report and subtracting half the hour of .20 which had some sleet too gives us  .35  that fell as snow. Tack on the half inch of sleet we had and 4 inches wasn't that far away.

Looking in the Crystal Ball
We are going to remain cold through middle February. I've mentioned a term called a "Sudden Stratospheric Warming" in the past-- while that sounds crazy a simple definition is the Stratosphere (Almost in outer space) suddenly warms and pushes the cold in the Troposphere. ( towards earth)  When these happens, cold outbreaks are not far behind. We are in the midst of one and the cold comes early February.

Snow and storms?? I'm watching an event for Feb 2-3. Track and temps are not yet defined.

Assuming the first 10 days of February are cold-- often cold snaps are ended with larger storms. Feb 10-15 is a random guess. Also, cold flows to allow for "Clippers" little storms from Canada. Most dry up in the mountains or traditionally go to our north, but we could fine one that digs a little more due to large ridge on the west coast.