00:00Well, here on the forecast feed, December 1st is upon us the beginning of meteorological winter.
00:06We may still have a few weeks to go before official astronomical winter begins,
00:10but we are certainly in the snow season.
00:12In fact, 33% of the nation has snow cover right now.
00:17How about that? 33%? That's above average for this time of the year.
00:20A pretty good start, and we're going to be adding snow cover.
00:24So we're going to be, I don't know if it's going to be 48% or so in another two days,
00:28but we're going to be painting a little more snow onto the map here
00:31for many other areas across some of the area that I'm highlighting there in that circle.
00:37So I really want to focus primarily on more of the longer-range forecast into the weekend,
00:43but before we get there, I do want to at least acknowledge,
00:46I can't acknowledge, I can't ignore the elephant in the room being the snow
00:51currently falling in the Midwest and moving through the Northeast through our Tuesday.
00:56Now we're going to see a little bit of snow quickly change over to rain along Interstate 95
01:02in some of the areas I'm highlighting.
01:04From D.C. south, I think it's just really just rain.
01:07We've got icy concerns down this way into areas around the Blue Ridge of Virginia,
01:12some areas with 1 to 3 in the light shading,
01:16but 3 plus here in some other areas like Ohio and into western Pennsylvania.
01:22Poconos, Catskills, other areas here, widespread 3 to 6.
01:27And then if you look up into the Berkshires and areas around the Worcester Hills
01:33and up into southern parts of New Hampshire, for example,
01:36likely to see 6 to 12 inches of snow there.
01:39So again, it's going to be another early season event, but an interesting one.
01:44It's going to bring us some significant snow.
01:45And then a cold blast follows a new cold front, tears on through,
01:50and that's going to bring us a new batch of cold air.
01:54So as this fires through Wednesday night into Thursday,
01:56we get back into it with more cold air in place.
01:59There's no shortage of cold with this pattern.
02:01Many times the snow fans are kind of not happy that we make it into early January.
02:07We haven't seen many decent opportunities for snow.
02:09That's not the case this year.
02:11We are getting into a snowy pattern, and I'm going to show you some of the upper-level flow.
02:18This is the 500 millibar forecast for winds.
02:22The bright colors are vorticity, a measure of spin in the atmosphere.
02:26And if you have the bright colors to your west in the northern hemisphere,
02:29that usually means you're in a position where there will be extra lift,
02:33extra rising motion in the atmosphere.
02:34So these troughs, when these troughs are approaching you,
02:37here we have, for example, the GFS.
02:40I'm illustrating the trough.
02:41You can see these little bits of spin in the atmosphere.
02:44Areas east of there will be where we generally expect to see some rising motion,
02:48cloud production, snowfall production, and so forth.
02:50Now, the details are tough for this weekend.
02:53Beyond the higher confidence snowfall we're talking about for the interior Tuesday,
02:57let's look ahead to the weekend.
02:58There's an opportunity for snow in the interior,
03:02and maybe even closer to I-95 for the weekend.
03:05Now, the GFS model, it's pretty timid with this trough.
03:09There it is.
03:10Another trough follows this one in the northern branch, but it's way north.
03:15We have another zone of low pressure way out over northwest Mexico.
03:18Not much of a factor.
03:19It hangs back so far.
03:20So the weekend, a flat trough in the GFS.
03:25What's that do for us?
03:26Not a whole lot.
03:27I'm going to switch over to basically the surface and the pattern that the GFS produces.
03:36You can see it brings us this short-lived disturbance that brings us a little bit of snow
03:41to parts of Nebraska, probably a 1 to 3, isolated 3-plus snow event.
03:48Parts of the Ohio Valley would get a little bit of snow.
03:50It's a flat wave, though.
03:51So if you are on the down-sloping side of the mountains, if you're near I-95,
03:56there just wouldn't be much precipitation of any type.
03:59It's cold enough for snow.
04:01You just wouldn't see much.
04:02That's with the GFS.
04:03Going back, again, that is with this kind of a short, abbreviated trough that really is not that impressive.
04:11It doesn't really penetrate much into the mid-Atlantic or the south.
04:13If we look at the European, look at this.
04:16It's a different story.
04:17It's singing a bit of a different tune.
04:18It's a deeper trough.
04:20This is the GFS, and here's the European.
04:23Quite the difference in amplitude.
04:26Still, it's a positively tilted trough for the most part.
04:30So it wouldn't be a blockbuster storm.
04:33But again, the pattern is right for cold air across the east and at least a disturbance or two that kicks through.
04:40So we need to keep a close eye on the depth of the trough.
04:43If the European is right, still not a blockbuster storm.
04:47Why is that?
04:48Well, partly because there's an interior, another trough that's just a little too removed from the southern branch feature.
04:56So they're not really working together in phases with one another.
04:58But regardless, the European does bring us a deeper trough.
05:02And look at this.
05:02This one, early in the weekend, brings us not only precipitation to South Jersey and the eastern Carolinas,
05:09but also a zone of ice, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and D.C., and snow, really, from New York west.
05:16It's not much if we take this at face value, but it's a system.
05:20And it would bring some accumulating snow, limited, maybe an inch or two, into Boston with some rain from the city south and east.
05:27So, again, the pattern is right.
05:30That does kind of just scream signals of snow.
05:32We've got to keep an eye on this.
05:34It's not a done deal by any stretch.
05:36So, as we kind of go back to our graphics, this is a graphic that Bernie and Chief Meteorologist John Porter and others put together just to talk about the risk.
05:45If we take things at face value, looking exclusively at the computer models, the out-to-see scenario is more likely,
05:52probably something like maybe a 70% likelihood, but there's still a 30% chance something comes up the coast.
05:58And we've got potential for snow and ice.
06:01It's not off the table yet.
06:03The pattern is sometimes the bigger thing to keep an eye on when we're this far out,
06:07instead of just getting locked into only exclusively hugging the models.
06:12And just to give you a quick, quick look beyond that.
06:16Beyond that, we've got cold air that lingers in the east through next week,
06:19and then the European brings us a warm-up around the 15th of December for a time,
06:25but lots of cold rampant across the plains.
06:27That would be a short-term case.
06:29But, again, just more opportunities for snow through the weekend,
06:33and then into the next week.
06:34Each disturbance, each disturbance is another one, would bring its opportunities for snow.
06:38And just to take a look at the weeklies here, the weekly forecast for temperature,
06:43colder than average, still chillier than average through Christmas week,
06:46north of the PA Turnpike, still chillier than average for a time.
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