Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 - Morning Weather Discussion

We will have another significant winter storm tonight and tomorrow, however this time the storm will likely feature some significant freezing rain and sleet as well, which could introduce a problem with power outages if the snow does not fall off the trees today, although it should.  The snow should start tonight around 11 pm and then mix with and change to sleet and freezing rain in the early morning before ending around 4 pm.  Total snow and ice accumulations should be 4-10 inches from north to south across Northern New Jersey.  The highest amounts will be in far Northern Sussex County and in Orange County, New York, with the lowest amounts near Rt. 78. Then the next storm to watch will be one that will develop in the Southeast on Saturday.  It will then move northeast and intensify as it does so.  The big question this morning is how much this storm will intensify and how far it will come up the coast?  The European, Canadian and British models all keep this storm rather weak and push it out to sea on Sunday, bringing our area only a bit of snow on Saturday and Sunday, but no big deal.  On the other hand, the American model produces an extremely intense blizzard that would rival some of the greats of all-time for areas from Eastern Virginia through New England with some snow all the way down to Georgia.  The complications with this forecast are many.  First of all the models that don’t have this intense storm are better statistically than the American model and typically I would just go with them completely.  However the American model does use a completely different data initialization system than the other models and it has been extremely consistent with this storm, and consistency is very important when trying to predict this type of storm.  The European and Canadian models have been waffling back and forth on each run.  Also, the American model is run every 6 hours while the others are only run every 12 hours, so the American model also has the latest data, and this run it produced the most intense storm yet of any run.  So, what will happen?  I honestly don’t know at this point so I put just a chance of some snow in for Saturday and Sunday and we will just have to wait and see.  The focus here for this intense storm potential would be Sunday into Monday morning.  Then next week there is a chance of another storm next Thursday.