Tuesday, February 19th, 2013, Morning Weather Discussion

Today a cold front will approach, with warm air surging north into our area ahead of the cold front, bringing some rain this afternoon.  The next storm of concern will approach on Friday.  This storm is apparently going to break into two pieces, the first of which will bring a chance of some light snow on Friday night.  The second piece of this storm will then approach our region on Saturday afternoon and night, bringing a chance of rain or snow, which could be heavy at times on Saturday night and into early Sunday morning.  Whether this storm is rain or snow will be dependent upon exactly how and where it develops.  This storm however does have the potential to bring significant precipitation to our area on Saturday night and right now, the boundary line between rain and snow runs right through our area.  The European model is typically the best model at handling situations like this in this time range.  Right now, it has the rain/snow line running along Rt. 78 and through New York City for the first half of the storm, prior to pushing that line to the south of our entire area, causing the rain to change to snow everywhere in our area about halfway through the storm.  Areas to the North of Rt. 78 that remain all snow are projected currently by the European model to get up to a foot of snow, with areas just to the south that are a combination of rain and snow receiving 6-9 inches, including New York City itself.  Of course, this is all subject to change on the next model run, so we have to keep a close eye on this potential and see if the model continues with this forecast.  The European model did do nearly perfectly in this time range with the recent blizzard and in general, the European model usually does quite well within this time range.  So, we shall see.  Check back for updates.  The snow from this system could linger throughout the day on Sunday, then the next storm of concern will occur on Tuesday, and this storm could be either rain or snow depending on how the storm develops.  After this storm, the next potential storm is the one that I am most concerned about, and is the storm I have been talking about for a few days now.  This storm has the potential to be quite significant as the northern and southern jet streams could phase together, causing a very significant Nor’easter to develop.  Right now it looks like the timing of this storm has moved up to next Thursday night and Friday, and this storm has the potential to linger through the weekend and even into early next week, as it could stall out in our area.  The details are still very much in question with this potential storm, it may not even happen at all, and if it does, it could still be either rain or snow, depending upon how it develops, if it develops at all.  Again, check back for updates.