Sunday, November 23, 2014 - Morning Weather Discussion

A major snowstorm is likely for the most densely populated area of our country at the busiest time for travel. The timing could not be worse…

First though, it will be variably cloudy and warmer today with highs in the low 50’s.

Tonight rain will develop around 11 pm and become heavy at times overnight and into tomorrow morning around 9-10 am.  There will then be a chance of scattered showers the rest of the day with highs in the mid to upper 60’s.

A cold front will then move through early on Tuesday morning so the high temperatures will occur early in the morning with highs in the mid to upper 50’s, dropping to the upper 40’s to low 50’s by afternoon.  We should have mostly sunny skies. 

Then all the fun begins very early on Wednesday morning as a low pressure area will start to develop in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles west of Tampa Bay and Fort Meyers, Florida.  This low pressure area will then move northeastward across the Florida Peninsula on Wednesday morning, reaching a point about 50 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida.  It will then start to develop into a Nor'easter and head northward up the East Coast of the United States reaching a point near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon.  The storm will be strengthening as it is moving northward.  It will then reach a point about 100 miles off the coast of New Jersey on Wednesday night, then continue north to a point near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, then finally to a point in the Gulf of Maine on Thursday morning.    

If this track verifies as I have outlined above, a major snowstorm would be likely Wednesday into Thanksgiving morning for the Western Carolinas, Virginia (excluding southeastern sections), Eastern West Virginia, Maryland (excluding extreme southeastern sections), Delaware (excluding southeastern sections), the eastern half of Pennsylvania, New Jersey (excluding possibly coastal sections), the eastern half of New York State including New York City and the western half of Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts (excluding southeastern Massachusetts), all of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

In these areas a large swath of 6-12 inches of snow will be likely with the possibility of localized amounts of 12-18 inches and localized amounts as much as 12-20 inches in New England.

There will also be a chance of a bit more snow on Saturday morning and again on Sunday night into Monday morning.

It should then warm up after that for a while.

SO NOW, LET’S DISCUSS WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS FORECAST.  REMEMBER, THIS IS ALL DEPENDENT UPON THINGS WORKING OUT AS I HAVE OUTLINED ABOVE. 

One thing that could go wrong is that the storm could track further east, leaving us with much lower snowfall amounts.  The second possibility is that the storm could track closer to the coast.  As you already probably noticed, I have excluded many of the coastal areas from the heavy snow area as the storm may come just close enough to the coast to allow some warm air to filter in there, keeping it mainly rain or a mix right along the coastal areas.  If the storm were to track closer to the coast or even inland it would allow warm air to filter in much further inland, causing rain to fall in many of the areas that I currently have designated as snow.  This is definitely still possible, although obviously I am not currently expecting that to happen.  It does however remain a possibility, especially in areas such as New York City and Western Long Island and possibly even into Northeastern New Jersey and Southern New Jersey.  Again, I don’t expect this at this time, but it is something that IS still possible.  I will certainly tell you immediately if my thoughts change.

The next thing to rant about is this:

The European model and the British model have the storm outlined very much along my line of thinking.  The European model got to my line of thinking early yesterday morning and the British model also came in line this morning.  Meanwhile, our American model just only now caught onto the storm.  Unfortunately, it is the older version of the model that they are planning to get rid of at the beginning of January that caught the storm this morning.

The newer version of the model, that they just spent a ton of money on to upgrade the computers and so on, is still nearly completely clueless about the storm. 

What is amazing is that they want to get rid of the older version of the model at the beginning of January and start using this newer version of the model that still does not depict the storm affecting us. 

Meanwhile the European and British models are right on track with my thoughts.

We are also paying Russia 70 million dollars per launch to take our astronauts into outer space because we don't currently have the ability to do this either.

We have a lot of work to do in this country.

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