Sunday Morning's Weather Discussion

I am a bit concerned about tomorrow morning’s commute throughout Northern NJ.  A weak storm system will be approaching our area early tomorrow morning, bringing some rain starting around 5am or 6am, but unfortunately, temperatures will likely remain below freezing until around 8am.  This means that the rain will freeze on all surfaces, especially considering how cold the ground is, and the fact that temperatures will drop to around 20 tonight shortly before the rain starts. This could make for a dangerous morning commute, as it only takes a very small amount of freezing rain to cause very dangerous driving conditions, and the timing here is horrible for the morning commute, on the busiest morning of the week for travel.  So, if you must travel tomorrow morning, please be extremely careful and be aware of the high likelihood of freezing rain until around 8am in most locations.  The rain should end late in the morning.  Then we need to look ahead toward a developing storm over the southeastern United States on Tuesday.  This storm will start to strengthen and move northeast on Wednesday, approaching our area on Wednesday afternoon and night.  It remains questionable as to how close this storm will get to Northern New Jersey.   The European model continues to suggest that the storm will remain safely to our south.  However, its own ensemble members bring the storm a bit closer to our area and the American model continues to bring the storm far enough to the north that it would bring accumulating snow to central and southern New Jersey.  Even worse than that, a quarter of the American model’s ensemble members actually bring accumulating snow as far north as Northern New Jersey and NYC.  The northward extent of this storm is dependent upon how strong a storm is that is currently in the northern jet stream and how much it phases with the storm in the southern jet stream.  We will just have to wait and see.  Right now, the best guess is that it will just barely miss us to the south, but we need to keep a close eye on this, because if that northern stream storm is a bit stronger and the models have not picked this up yet, then we could actually get a significant snowstorm on Wednesday night.  After this possible storm, we then need to look forward to next weekend.  There remains a possibility of storm developing near our area next Saturday night into Sunday morning.  Again, this will depend upon how much interaction there is between storms in both the northern and southern jet streams.  I am quite concerned about this potential though as the general pattern at that time is looking ominous.  The potential is there for a very significant Nor’easter to develop for next Saturday night into Sunday morning, but again, this is a long way out and it is possible these storms do not come together.  If they do not come together there may not be any storm at all, or there could be something in between if the storms partially phase.  In addition, I am watching for the potential of a significant storm for our area for Friday, February 22 into the morning of Saturday February 23^rd.   Check back for updates.