Tuesday, December 31st, 2013 - Morning Weather Discussion

Well, what can I say?  The weather situation is apparently extremely volatile right now and I have a headache.  The forecast this morning will look completely different from the one last night.  It is so rare that the European model does what it did last night this close to a storm that I still can’t believe it.  Almost always the European model will be right, and will often be the only one being right when we are this close to a storm.  Yes, the model does some strange stuff like this when we are 6-7 days out from a storm, but 2-3 days out?  Now, that is extremely rare.  I still can’t believe it.  They did make some major changes to the model last month, supposed improvements, and I am wondering if possibly that had something to do with it?  I have seen other meteorologists mention that the European model did similar things in other areas of the country recently, and they are wondering if that might be the case.  What is apparently going to happen is that the two storms are going to take longer to come together, with the more northern one keeping most of its moisture to our north across central New York State and New England, and the southern one keeping most of its moisture to our south and east, until they finally come together on Thursday night, but then it pulls away by Friday morning.  The majority of our accumulation was supposed to happen on Thursday night and into Friday morning, but now the storm is expected to be gone by sunrise on Friday, and with it, there goes the big accumulations.  First of all though we will have a chance of some snow showers today with a dusting of accumulation possible, then light snow should start before sunrise on Thursday and continue through the day with an inch of accumulation possible by Thursday night.  On Thursday night the snow will become moderate in intensity and will end before sunrise on Friday with total accumulations of 4-5 inches likely.  Temperatures will drop to single digits by Friday morning, with highs only in the teens.  Then we have to wonder if the European model is correct with its second storm, which it is saying will be very intense, even stronger than this one was supposed to have been.  The track that the model is showing would keep us on the warm side of the storm with rain developing on Sunday around mid day and becoming heavy at night and very heavy on Monday morning as temperatures rise into the low to mid 50’s.  According to the European model it will also get very windy, with wind gusts of 40-50 mph possible and flooding rains, especially with the snow melt on top of it.  Then the temperatures would plummet in the afternoon with temperatures dropping to the 20’s by evening with the rain likely changing to snow showers and a flash freeze with the extremely rapid temperature drop.  Then temperatures will approach zero for lows on Tuesday and Wednesday with a high only around 10 degrees next Tuesday.  Then another storm is likely to approach for late in the week, but now this one appears as if it may be rain, but honestly, that is just a long way out so we will just have to wait and see what happens.