Thursday, November 28th, 2013 - Morning Weather Discussion

We will have a slight chance of a Lake Effect snow shower or flurry today and then again tomorrow morning and it will be cold both days with highs around 30 today and in the mid 30’s tomorrow.  Saturday night there will then be a chance of some light snow late at night and into Sunday morning as a weak storm system combines with a moist flow off the ocean.  If we do get any snow on Saturday night it should not amount to much more than a dusting.  Then on Monday we will have to keep a close eye on the potential for a Nor'easter to develop off the Atlantic Coast.  It is starting to look more likely that a Nor'easter will develop on Monday but there are still many questions as to how it will develop, and more importantly where it will develop, and the track that it will take once it does develop.  Right now I will back the chances for this affecting our area to about 50%.  The way I see it, there remain three possible scenarios.  One is that the storm either does not develop, or develops well out to sea and misses us completely.  The second scenario is that the storm develops and side-swipes us with a bit of rain or snow, and the third is that the storm bombs out and develops into a major Nor'easter giving us either a lot of rain or a lot of snow.  The timing still looks to focus on Monday night into Tuesday, however if option three were to occur it would linger into Wednesday.  I can’t give you anything more than that at this point though because every possible solution is on the table right now.  The American model currently produces option one, missing us completely.  The European model currently produces option two, side swiping us with a bit of rain or snow but hitting New England fairly hard, and the Canadian and British models both blow this storm up and produce a major Nor'easter affecting parts of the East Coast with a major storm.   We will just have to wait and see what happens.  To give you a bit more information to work with, right now the European model, as always remains statistically in first place in terms of accuracy in the time range of this storm, with the British model, as always remaining in second place, then the Canadian model comes in third place, followed by the Japanese model in fourth place, then our American model in fifth place, then the U.S. Navy model in sixth place.  Why do our models come in so low on the list?  It is because we use an inferior method of initializing all of the data for the models.  All of the other models use the same method, but we refuse to give in.  Hence, our country currently has the statistically worst models at the moment.  Our government has been cutting back on funding the National Weather Service since the late 80’s.  That is one of the main reasons that I did not go into weather forecasting for a career in the first place.  They closed half the National Weather Service offices in the early 90’s.  We used to have local National Weather Service offices in Newark, NJ, that covered Northeast New Jersey and in Allentown, Pennsylvania that covered Northwest New Jersey.   Now the office that covers Northeast New Jersey is located on the Eastern end of Long Island and the one that covers Northwest New Jersey is in South Jersey by Philadelphia.  I have noticed a drastic drop in accuracy from the National Weather Service since then.  Anyway, moving forward it looks as if we may get some freezing rain on Thursday night and rain on Friday as another storm approaches, then possibly some rain for next Sunday and Monday, then we will have to watch for the possibility of another Nor'easter around the middle of the following week, sometime between Tuesday, December 10^th, and Thursday, December 12^th.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!  Below is a picture from my home this morning with a touch of snow on the golf course.  Enjoy.