Complications

By:  Lionel Hutz
December 5, 2014 5:37 am | Category: Weather

Life is complicated sometimes.

This weekend’s weather provides no exception to said rule.

On Friday a strong disturbance will move out of the American southeast and spread a shield of precipitation into the Northeast. The center of the disturbance will track southwest to northeast through southern NY, Conn and eastern Mass. Strong mid-level warm air advection associated with the low will push temperatures well above the very chilly temps we woke up to this morning. Associated with the low and warm air advection abundant mid-level lift will occur. This will produce pretty heavy precipitation (on the order of a widespread .5″ to 1″ qpf).

The complication to this event will be the northward impact of the warm mid-level air. Right now, the higher resolution models show the 850mb level warming to above 0C north to about Albany/Rutland with a spike through the Champlain Valley. The obvious impact of this is that the precip that falls during this period will not fall frozen. It does appear (now) that the Central ADK, and Green Mtns north of Rt. 125 or so will retain thermal profiles to allow frozen precip to occur down to about 2000ft through the entire event. I use the word frozen for a reason. With mid level warming sleet is highly likely through periods of this event. It will be close however.

As noted above…there is plenty of moisture streaming through. The result could be a very dense 3-5″(+) for the higher summits of the ADK, and the Greens north of the Midd Gap.

Further east, NH and Maine will see similar conditions. The DMZ if you will appears likely to reside somewhere in Central NH and just south of Sunday River. Likely the White Mtn ski areas and northern/western Maine areas stay on the “frozen” side for Saturday.

The next issue we have to deal with is what happens with a second impulse of energy riding along a front saturday into sunday. Right now models are split on how far south this impulse is shunted. If the frontal zone stalls through central VT, this wave will likely bring additional snows to the ADK, Greens and Whites. If it is pushed further south, the snow from this wave, light as it might be, will be further south. My guess, is that Sat-Sun could see another 1-3″

We’re not done. Next week from tuesday to Wednesday there are likely going to to be pieces in place that COULD result in a large coastal storm. Said pieces are a deep trough moving through the Great Lakes, and a shortwave of energy ejecting out of the GOM. If these pieces were to link up: boom. The EURO links them, as does other global models and develops a very large sub 980mb low inside the benchmark. Reuslt- impressive snows for the N/E. I don’t buy that solution. The GFS is slower with the southern low and as a result the interaction between the system occurs out to sea and the result is no pow for you. This seems the more likely solution given the overall timing of these types of systems. Obviously I’ll keep you updated.

Related Stuff:

  1. I’m back and I (might) have brought some snow.
  2. Light Snow on Monday then a Bigger Storm on Tap for Wednesday into Thursday
  3. Snow Accumulations Expected Monday Night and Tuesday Across the Higher Elevations of the Adirondacks, Greens, and Whites
  4. Dy-no-mite! Powerful Storm On Tap for Much of NY, VT and NH
  5. UPDATED 2/29/12: Winter Storm “Gamma” (With a nod to the real VTAH – utah)
  6. A few more days of Brrrrmont, then….

One Comments

  1. St. Bear
    wrote on December 7th, 2014 at 6:21 pm  
    1

    Why do you trust the GFS? It’s been late to the party all fall. It didn’t catch last week’s snow until the ground was almost white.

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