One storm is pulling away; the pattern says more storms ahead!

 Our storm that brought all the snow is pulling away.

While there were few areas that underperformed; the vast majority of the region met forecast expectations or even slightly surpassed them. I hope you liked my forecast approach to the storm and even maybe learned a thing or two.

Here is a look at the current surface chart and radar

Behind the storm we're going to stay cold and over the next couple weeks we are going to see several waves of cold move into and through the region. So the snow and ice we have is going to be sticking around with not a lot of melting going on.

The storm is to our east and we have several troughs Rotating around it moving through the region These are causing scattered snow showers Popping up over the region Most of us today will pick up an additional dusting to maybe 2 or 3 inches of accumulation, Bought for New England Closer to the storm You could pick up 3 to maybe 6 inches of snow today, Across Maine you could see much more than that. A winter storm warning Remains in effect for southern and central Maine until tomorrow at 3AM. Winds Will redevelop over New York state and Pennsylvania and stay in place over new England are going to be 5-15 mph with gust of 25 to maybe 30 mph possible. 

Over the next couple of days we are going to have a couple of clippers move through Bringing the chance for some scattered snow showers across the region. As these cold winds move across lake Erie And lake Ontario they are going to kick off lake effect snow starting this evening and tonight and tonight. Those under the most persistent part of the band could see 6-12 inches of lake effect snow. The lake effect is going to continue for Tuesday and Wednesday with those downwind of both lakes picking up a few more inches of snow each day. Thursday the winds will be switching orientation Increasing increasing increasing the risk for Increasing the risk for lake effect snow Those areas downwind of the lakes could pick up another 6-12 inches or so of snow accumulation. For the rest of the region with clouds and sun. It should be mostly dry but there could be a few snow showers or flurries for some of us.

As I said temperatures this week are going to be frigid with winds being  breezy keeping wind chills quite cold.

Image courtesy of tropical tidbits

Looking ahead The pattern is going to stay active and progressive. As I've been saying over the last couple of weeks The pattern is going to support The northern polar jet and southern subtropical jet having better chances of phasing as we see storms track into the East Coast. The 1st possible east coast storm will be end of this week and over the coming weekend.

Mid to end of week we're going to have a strong area of high pressure Drop out of Canada and move into the plains and midwest.Disk trough is going to drag in More cold air We will see a boundary setup between that warm moist air over the golf and the cold air streaming in from the north. We're going to see low pressure develop along that boundary and become a storm. Right now it looks like the storm is going to set up closer to the Gulf Coast or even out over the Gulf. The question right now is where does this storm track. The current storm that is pulling away was pretty much an easy storm to track. The one that will be forming closer to the end of the week and over the weekend Will be more difficult.   Right now there are three scenarios. The first  is the storm moves off the Southeast Coast and heads north and east grazing The northern Middle Atlantic and New England. This scenario is more of an out to see without a lot of impacts for  the Northeast and northern Middle Atlantic. The second scenario is going to be this tracks north and east closer to the coast (possibly in the goldilocks zone), as it moves north and east and possibly bombing out east of the Delmarvia Peninsula and south of long island, This scenario would bring very heavy snow into the northern Middle Atlantic and the I-95 Corridor , Central Pennsylvania right up into New England. The third scenario is this comes up the Coast just inland east of the Appalachians as a much weaker storm. This scenario brings light to moderate  snow farther west over interior New York State and Pennsylvania while sparing the coast and major cities a major hit.

EURO

GFS

Images courtesy of tropical tidbits

Which of these 3 scenarios we see is going to depend on timing, the orientation of that trough, as well as where the storm initially forms along that frontal baroclinic zone temperature boundary. 

Those who like winter weather and coastal storms should be very happy with the developing pattern!