Storm Potential Early Next Week...

P

powderfreak

New member
Now this is not something that will jinx anything because I'm not making a
forecast. I'm going to lay a few things down and point out what to me
seems like our best shot at significant snowfall for the entire
northeast.

First lets discuss why this event would not take place:
1) No negative NAO...gonna take some work to get this thing to take a
negative tilt and blast northward
2) No 50/50 low which is a low pressure system at, you guessed it,
50N/50W...for a solid nor'easter we usually need a low up in that region
to drill cold air down into New England.
3) Our pattern this year just hasn't favored large coastal storms.

So with those three things said...
The GFS has been hinting at it for a while. Its a situation where we get
one peice of energy to come down on Sunday and move off the mid-Atlantic
coast...then a second clipper comes down behind it, cold air is getting in
place from the first one...and the second clipper redevelops and goes to
town...maybe even capturing the first clippers energy and drawing it
back. If anyone looks at the 12z GFS for today the'll see what I'm
talking about. Do not look at the surface map. Its wrong. The GFS looks
right at 500mb but the surface low is forming too far east...which doesn't
make any sense with the 500mb vort max back over the mid-Atlantic. Once
the GFS figures this out it'll have a storm right off the New Jersey coast.

So yes, the GFS does suck and it's nickname is the model that's Generally
Fulla tihS. Meanwhile the EURO is the model of choice for the mid-range
of 3-7 days. Once we get inside of 84hrs then the ETA and GFS gain more
weight. So lets see what the Euro says:

Ha. Hahaha. A 986mb low just south of Long Island next Monday night.
Now I can't get precipitation amounts on the EURO but I based on the
relative humidity...it has 80-100% RH from Maine to Michigan which would
imply heavy snow all the way back to Ohio. Oh yeah, its all snow away
from Cape Cod and the southern shore of R.I. That system would then move
NNE up into the Gulf of Maine. The perfect track. Hmmm.

But anyway...I've never seen so many major meteorologists jump on this
idea. The late December 2000 storm looked like this. I remember that was
quite a decent dump for many people on New Year's Eve.

I will say this on my personal thoughts which are probably worthless but
I'll give 'em anyway:
Keep hope. Our season is just getting started. But this storm will
form. Where it forms is the question. Once it hits the ocean something
will happen. These storms are called "Miller B's"...they are clippers
that redevelop and bomb out. The usually have sharp precip cut offs to
the west. The cards are on the table. For a best case senario I put two
EURO maps on my webpage. This are last nights 00z run. I heard that the
12z EURO run looks even better than this and still shows a major east
coast snowstorm.

http://www.uvm.edu/~sbraaten/EuroDay7/EuroDay7.bmp
http://www.uvm.edu/~sbraaten/EuroDay7/EuroDay7RH.bmp

Just keep this in mind. I'll keep you updated day to day.

-Scott
 
FWIW, yesterday's 0Z GFS had this storm as an inside runner and had some major blocking going on - it parked the storm over eastern Maine for about 72 hours. Today's run is 300-500 miles east and north of that, which doesn't sound right either. I alluded to it here.

Hopefully the models will get a better handle on it soon.

Today's 12Z AVN shows a nice strong cold low over southern Ontario and pushing hard to the coast at 5 days, which is a nice sign.
 
I like the looks of Crotched, Ragged, and Sunapee this weekend. I feel a couple of feet coming on. Now I know I've traditionally been a whistle blower/wolf cryer, whatever you guys want to call it. But I've got my yard stick ready!

-porter
 
I live for this stuff. Which is why I'm up at 130 still analyzing something that's 4-6 days away. Its gonna be a long end of the week with 3 finals and then I'm driving to Boston on Friday night then over to Albany on Saturday morning...I'll try my best to keep everyone posted.

So here are some thoughts right now...

Models are surprisingly in ok agreement. I'm still err-ing on the side of caution. Now I do think that southern New England up through eastern NH and most of Maine are in for a good snowstorm. The caution side comes for how far west the precip goes. This looks like it'll be a triple phaser with the subtropical jet, northern jet, and arctic jet. There's gonna be some cold air behind this sucker. I still don't like the fact that we do not have a negative NAO. But maybe I'll have to get over that fact as all models do show some sort of major storm.

So after reviewing tonights data I'll give my thoughts right now:

Without having any reliable information on the northern energy (still way west in the pacific) we really do not have much an idea about what will happen. Once we get this energy into Canada and the Canadian plains, will we know what is going to happen. So I'm going with Climo...which says these storms dig into the Ohio Valley, then phase and form a low off the coast of New Jersey or even the Delmarva area...which then move NNE up to off of Cape Cod then up into the Gulf of Maine. That is the basic storm track...give or take 100 miles for waffing. NH and ME along with eastern MA have the shot at getting clobbered. We need it to form further east for central NY-Adirondacks-Green Mountains to get in the action.

So right now...go with climotology. A storm track off the east coast, moving NNE. My only fear is it'll be too far east for the mountains...even NH.
 
Yah, the 12/15 0Z AVN and GFS are in absolute lockstep at day 5, bombing the low off the New Jersy coast with the 850mb low centered over NJ.

Unusual for them to give that similar of a solution at the outer limit of the AVN's time period. Wonder what that means?

In other fields when all the experts are in agreement about something it's time to be very suspicious that something is being missed...

At this point, looking at the last 3 days of the GFS 0Z runs, I'm thinking that this thing doesn't phase and lightly hits downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, and then something mildly interesting happens with the second piece of energy coming out of the Canadian prairies. I HOPE I'm wrong and it's further west, but I guess we'll see.

BTW - it was freakin' COLD this morning in (geographically) central Maine: -3F for an overnight low at my house this morning. Crikey.
 
Roehmer is saying biggest Noreaster in years!!

Well where should my buddy and I count on a dumping for skiing Sun-Wed. (12/18-12/22)

A. Sunday River
B. Sugar Loaf
C. Killington
D. Jay

I'm thinking A. Or is the answer all of the above. Or is the answer "ask me Saturday"
 
DaveB99":11krp65p said:
Roehmer is saying biggest Noreaster in years!!
Click to expand...

Typical of him. "Biggest" recent storm was probably December 7th last year. 52" at Sugarloaf, and lots of places were over 40".

I'm still leaning towards maritime Canada for this one. Update in the morning.
 
Chromer":5nj8v8gl said:
DaveB99":5nj8v8gl said:
Roehmer is saying biggest Noreaster in years!!
Click to expand...

Typical of him. "Biggest" recent storm was probably December 7th last year. 52" at Sugarloaf, and lots of places were over 40".

I'm still leaning towards maritime Canada for this one. Update in the morning.
Click to expand...
yea, i can't imagine it being bigger than that december 7th storm last year. i got locked in my house for two days, and the college i work at was shut down for two more, for which i took full advantage at cannon. rediculous amount of snow that had some side streets not plowed until two or three days after the snow stopped. i can only hope it's as big as that.
 
Chromer wrote:
DaveB99 wrote:
Roehmer is saying biggest Noreaster in years!!


Typical of him. "Biggest" recent storm was probably December 7th last year. 52" at Sugarloaf, and lots of places were over 40".

I'm still leaning towards maritime Canada for this one. Update in the morning.
Click to expand...

This could be the biggest storm in history, but all those feet of snow may just fall into the ocean. That would be such a shame, but from what I'm reading, it doesn't sound like much of it will fall on land.
 
I really have to say that I'm up in the air with this one. I do not like the pattern. I stated this in my first post:

"First lets discuss why this event would not take place:
1) No negative NAO...gonna take some work to get this thing to take a
negative tilt and blast northward
2) No 50/50 low which is a low pressure system at, you guessed it,
50N/50W...for a solid nor'easter we usually need a low up in that region
to drill cold air down into New England.
3) Our pattern this year just hasn't favored large coastal storms."

I still do not like the pattern. I do think it will be progressive but there is still some uncertainty in the models. GFS, EURO, ETA are all far enough off-shore to spare NY-VT-western MA heavy snowfall. I do think they are out of the game at this point except for some possible light 2-4 inch accumulations as the energy crosses over the area, and once the coastal low takes over there should be enough lift up to ALB to squeeze out a couple inches.

I will not cancel the call for heavy snow in portions of NH and ME at this juncture. I do believe some of the mountains could pick up to a foot in the Sugarloaf-Sunday River-Cranmore area. 'Chromer is sittin' pretty ;)
 
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