Quiet Now, Stormy Later?
Happy New Year everyone...all the best 2011! The week is starting off nice and quiet...not bad Winter weather expected tomorrow and Thursday. Clouds will be rolling in Thursday afternoon and sun will fade away not to be seen again until Sunday. In between is what's interesting though...
Cyclogenesis is about to occur along the Gulf Coast this low will intensify when it scoots to the East Coast. The flat flow will press the storm to our south and then east so we miss that one. A clipper system will be diving down from Canada late Thursday...moisture starved but loaded with energy it will induce cyclogenesis again this time off the Mid-Atlantic that storm center too will likely stay too far offshore to impact the area but a trough of low pressure will hang back over the Northeast somewhere capable to produce several inches of snow. This has the "Norlun" trough type signature to it so it has us highly concerned because these small scale features have been known to produce hefty amounts of snow over a very narrow area. With that said, there has been consistency amongst the guidance to keep this feature mostly to our south...NYC / LI / RI...over the last 12 hours. Based on the location of the cut-off to our west I like where the models have placed the maximum PVA (to our south and west). The 700mb lift is also in that location and lastly, weak 850mb flow exists over most of Southern New England but seems to have better convergence to our south as well. So, all signs are pointing to this thing setting up south of us...with that said this is a very small scale feature that models have a very tough time picking up on let alone placing in the correct spot so again we are cautiously optimistic that only light snow will occur this far north into Southern New England. We will be watching trends tonight and tomorrow.
Next week's set-up looks much more promising for bigger snows than Friday night / Saturday does...IMO...exciting!
