Lake-effect snow could lead to feet of snow on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but that's just the first of multiple winter storms on the way for November and early December.
00:00It is time for the forecast feed. We are sniffing out snow. We've got lake effect snow off the top.
00:05We have a weekend storm that's going to be a high travel impact event.
00:09We'll look at that with the computer models, then we'll take a look at our storm snapshots for the first half of the weekend,
00:15and then the end of the storm system as it rolls into the northeast, and then we'll also take a look a little beyond that.
00:20There could be some snow maybe closer, maybe not fully at, but closer to the east coast coming up into the middle of next week.
00:29First off, I do want to jump into a quick look at the lake effect snow setup here.
00:34We've already had a few rounds of lake effect snow so far this season in some areas,
00:39and here we can track our pretty strong low-pressure system that is ultimately responsible for a blizzard in areas around Duluth in its early stages,
00:48but this is going to evolve into a lake effect snow producer as well.
00:51So here we go into Wednesday night, Thursday morning, Thanksgiving morning.
00:55I'm going to plot the low on here, and it's generally up this way.
01:00And along with that, we do have some strong flow around the southwestern periphery of this,
01:07and you can see the isobars that will be driving the wind.
01:10So we have snow over Lake Superior, dumping heavy snow into northern parts of Michigan.
01:16That will carry a lot of this into the western parts of Michigan, parts of northeastern Indiana.
01:20And then the flow is a little more aligned for some pretty decent snow into the city of Erie and other areas here for a time,
01:26and also into Watertown, New York.
01:29So we'll be watching, and I think the heaviest snow in areas like the city of Erie will begin just after the front kicks through
01:36when temperatures begin to drop, and that will occur Wednesday night.
01:40You're going to probably get 6, 12, maybe 12 to 18 hours of pretty good snow in Erie,
01:45and then eventually the snow will be shifting south and becoming more of a northwest wind
01:50that distributes the snow over a larger area.
01:53Water temps near Buffalo, near the Niagara River, are 5 to 6 degrees lower than they were yesterday on the same date.
01:59And this time of the year, the water is plenty warm to fuel lake effect snow when you get cold air like this.
02:05So it's more a question of, is the water too warm, and therefore would you see a mix right at the lakeshore?
02:10In this case, we're going to see some rain on the front end.
02:12It's going to change over to snow down to the lakeshore, though it's plenty cold.
02:15And the water temps, chilling down just a little bit, just beginning the process of cooling down.
02:20So you can see the GFS models accumulating snow forecast here.
02:24And by Saturday morning, we got a 28-inch forecast there for parts of western, far western sections of the upper peninsula of Michigan.
02:33And we have some 8, 9, 12-inches in some spots, areas around maybe Olean and eastern Cattaraugus County of New York, 11-inch.
02:42So again, we don't want to take that too literally.
02:44Let's take a look at our AccuWeather forecast.
02:46And this is what we are looking at here for our forecast for snowfall Wednesday, Thursday, Friday for the accumulating snow.
02:54Populating the map here with the city labels.
02:56And overall, we're forecasting 12-24 inches here in Wattsburg and Corey, PA, up into Jamestown, New York.
03:03Also, 12-24 inches for the northern part of Michigan.
03:08So it'll be a hard hit for some.
03:09And somebody out there could see something closing in on that AccuWeather local stormax of 36 inches of snow.
03:16Now, we want to look forward beyond that because the forecast feed also looks a little farther down the line.
03:22And after that, you know, yesterday, if you tuned into our forecast feed, there was a tremendous amount of disagreement between the GFS, which was standing alone, and the European and the Canadian, which were more aligned with one another.
03:36Now we're seeing more agreement.
03:37Here's the GFS model for, let's go into, well, let's go Sunday at 7 a.m.
03:43There's the GFS.
03:44We have a trough kicking through parts of the Midwest here.
03:48We also have a trough kicking into the Southwest.
03:51And then we go to the European.
03:54And the European, pretty similar, pretty similar overall.
03:59So I think that there's better agreement here, and you're going to see this with the more explicit forecast of snow and rain for the weekend storm.
04:07Really concerned about areas from Omaha to Des Moines to Milwaukee.
04:12Chicago may be in that conversation, too, for significant snow.
04:15But you can see, here's the GFS, widespread snow, Saturday morning to midday, breaking out Lincoln, Nebraska.
04:25We'll see our first snow of the season in Denver, finally.
04:28But, again, may not be a long-lasting, tremendous storm there, but it will be a bigger deal into Omaha and Des Moines near Chicago.
04:36Now, the GFS brings us snow in Chicago.
04:39Again, there are some questions about precipitation type there.
04:41Here's the European, it's close, it's a little wetter, a little warmer in Chicago during the core of the storm system.
04:50But the overall screening message, the area that we're most confident in for snow, will be an area from Denver to Lincoln and Omaha to Des Moines to near and just north of Chicago for this weekend.
05:03And then we get into Sunday, and you can see, with the flow coming out of the south, the storm track where it is, if you have a surface low-pressure system that's tracking all the way this far north, you're going to get rain for most of the northeast cities.
05:17But in the interior, you may have some low-level cold air that could be trapped, and that could lead to maybe some snow at the onset, quickly changing over to sleet.
05:28You can see the signature, we have a proclivity for sleet in the Ridge and Valley region of central Pennsylvania.
05:34But it's going to be rain in Harrisburg and other areas there.
05:37I'm going to dump over to our graphics, just to give you our storm snapshots for Friday night to Saturday.
05:44And again, really amped up about snow, heavy snow, for this area from Omaha to Des Moines to near Chicago.
05:52That's where I think the heaviest snow is going to be.
05:54But it also checks the box, the snow season begins in Denver, Colorado.
05:59That's Friday night to Saturday.
06:00Remember, the storm track pretty far north.
06:04So with the storm tracking this way over Detroit, that opens the door for that flow to come in from the south.
06:09It's going to be a rain event for the I-95.
06:12Certainly a rain event there on Sunday.
06:14But still, big-time travel impacts there because of the volume, even with wet roads.
06:18But the snow is a bigger deal on the northwest side.
06:21Midwest snowstorm this weekend.
06:22Snow potential in the Midwest to northeast Tuesday, Wednesday next week.
06:25Then another storm from the Rockies to the Northern Plains perhaps next weekend.
06:29I just want to close us out with a look at the Tuesday-Wednesday storm system.
06:33This is a different one.
06:35Quick look at this.
06:36There's potential for snow into areas maybe like Interior of Virginia.
06:40Here's the European.
06:42Probably rain for the coast.
06:44My gut would say rain for the coast.
06:45But west of I-95, there's snow possible on the table Tuesday, Wednesday.
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