A quick look at the trends and storm analysis and a little bit on the great lakes

 

What happens with the storm will depend on timing of the key features.

Friday night into Saturday is when our attention is going to start turning to the system that's developing off the southeastern US coast. 

Looking at the EURO and then the GFS.

EURO

The EURO has the moving toward us Saturday night and Sunday. It has an upper level low  in the Tennessee valley and a low off the Carolina Coast.  The European has it  hitting  the southern Middle Atlantic as it shows the low phasing and trying to stall. As it tries to  head north it grazes the New Jersey Coast with maybe 2 to 3 inches. Then it starts to track north and east Bringing some impacts eastern Long Island (maybe New York City) into Southeast New England (especially the Off-shore islands, Cape and Boston) As well for Downeast Maine.

GFS

Last night's run had The GFS much more aggressive and farther north and west. Since then It has drifted closer to the EURO.  The GFS has this slamming the southern Middle Atlantic. It still as the upper level low up over the Tennessee valley. This has it intensifing further east bringing heavier snow just east of  New Jersey, showing a big hit  for east Long Island into south eastern New England.

Thursday We're going to have a piece of energy come onshore an set up over the Pacific Northwest and another piece of energy that's up north of the Great Lakes that will eventually become the upper level Low That will move into the Tennessee valley and set the stage for what's to come. The timing and speed of both these features Is going to determine how the storm evolves. Both of these should start working together somewhere over the southeast US. Both models have different ideas on exactly when that is going to happen and take place.

Both global models are quite similar. Last night there was some slight shifting east in the track on the models. But the models have been waffling east and west with the track. There is still time for more of that, But the window is closing on that possibility. 

Based on what I'm seeing right now I don't think The storm is gonna come up the coast just east of the Delmarva and  south of Long Island in the goldilocks zone. I think that arctic high pressure is just going to be just too strong for that. Nor do I think this is going straight  out to sea. I think it's going to take a track somewhere in between those two possibilities. With this storm just grazing coastal New Jersey Up across eastern Long Island and southeast New England into Downeast Maine. With the arctic air in place The snow is once again going to have a high fluff factor, So these areas could end up seeing 6 maybe 12 inches of snow. The Carolinas into Georgia and the tidewater of Virginia could see quite a bit of snow out of this. 

I still think this is not going to be a major storm for the Middle Atlantic and Northeast. It will likely have a coastal impact.  Wind is likely going to be a bigger factor in this along with  coastal flooding than the snow. Blizzard like conditions are a possibility for places like the Cape.

Great Lakes

A look at great lakes ice coverage

Heading into the winter the water temperatures across all five Great Lakes was at record highs. But the overall below average temperature since November have been lowering The water temperatures. So that now we do have ice build up on the Great Lakes. Looking at the images we can see that lake Erie and the northern half of Georgian Bay off of lake Huron are almost completely ice covered. But Lakes superior, Michigan, large part of Huron and Ontario still have a lot of open water. 

Total ice coverage across the Great Lakes is higher than this time over the last few years compared to this year. 

The amount of ice over the great lakes is very important when trying to forecast lake affect snow The more ice over the lakes the higher the chance that it will reduce the intensity of the lake effect bands. Lake effect snow bands can still set up but impacts are typically  reduced and tend to stay closer to the lake shore.