While Richmond, Virginia, has already received 3/4 of their usual snow for an entire winter, cities like New York have received only a trace so far. AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish looks to see if that could be about to change.
00:00It is time for the forecast feed, and it's been a pretty harsh start to winter when it comes to cold.
00:05There's been no shortage of cold in the central and eastern U.S.
00:09Some of you have seen a big surplus in snowfall, others not so much.
00:13Let's take a look at the snow cover as of early this Tuesday.
00:19And I say early because this snow cover analysis is technically captured around 1 a.m. Eastern time.
00:25But it's certainly what survived into the day, and some of the snow is still on the ground
00:28in parts of West Virginia and Virginia.
00:30So this is the result of the second storm system in about four days to cross the mid-Atlantic states.
00:37In the forecast feed, we're going to see if we can find any snow for I-95.
00:41We'll also look at some extraordinary cold air for the upper Midwest this weekend.
00:45But this has been an interesting story, too.
00:46We talked about this with the feed on Monday, how we had our second accumulating snow down
00:50in Richmond, Virginia, and in northern North Carolina since Friday, Friday and again on Monday.
00:56Now, what you may notice is a big lack of snow.
00:59Boston to New York City to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
01:03Many of you in Philly and New York and Boston are still waiting for your first accumulating
01:08snow of the season.
01:09So it's been a little unorthodox.
01:11We've had a couple of significant rounds of snow pass to your south and, you know, miss
01:18New York and Philadelphia.
01:19But impact areas like Richmond, Virginia, take a look at how rare this is to get this kind
01:23of snow.
01:23So here's a view of the area of Pittsburgh in the background.
01:28And overall, I'm going to switch over just to help you see the whole graphic full.
01:35We're dealing with, again, a really impressive start to the snow season in areas like South
01:41Bend, Indiana.
01:42You've had 31.9 inches of snow already.
01:45Typically, we'd only see about 8.3 by now.
01:48And we're already about halfway to our winter average in South Bend.
01:52A lot of that came down over a weekend, a couple of weekends ago, when we had some really
01:58heavy lake effect snow move in off of Lake Michigan.
02:01Chicago has done really well with snow.
02:04Maybe not great if you're in the transportation industry here.
02:07Maybe a bus driver or a truck driver or somebody trying to navigate planes in and out of O'Hare.
02:1217 inches of snow so far.
02:15Typically, we're only at 3.7 by now.
02:17We averaged 39 inches in an entire season.
02:20So we're working on maybe 45% of average.
02:24Richmond, Virginia, you've had 20 times your average.
02:27Take 0.3 times 10, you get 3 inches.
02:32Times 20, you get 6 inches.
02:33That's how much you've had.
02:34So we're way above average here, above the historical average, thanks to those two snowfalls
02:39in Richmond along I-95 way south of D.C.
02:43A 2-inch event and a 4-inch event.
02:44Very impressive.
02:45So we had 6.9 inches of snowfall in Newport News near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at
02:51sea level on Monday.
02:52And your average snowfall in Richmond over the course of an entire winter, 8.7 inches.
02:58So you're way above.
02:59With that said, on the other hand, Boston, just a trace.
03:03I'm trying to demarcate the big contrast here.
03:06Boston, you've only had a trace of snow so far.
03:08New York City, just a trace.
03:09We've had flakes, but nothing that really measured even a tenth of an inch.
03:13We typically have between an inch and a half and three inches by now.
03:16And part of the message is it's still so early that I know that we average about 2.7 by now
03:21in Boston, but we climb all the way up to 48.7 inches as our annual average.
03:26So again, that's a sign that we have a long way to go before we really get into the heart of winter.
03:34Especially along I-95 where you've got the warm water out there.
03:38And that warm water is an influence early in the season at bringing in rain instead of snow.
03:43Now we have a really significant blast of Arctic air that's going to be tearing in.
03:47And by Friday, it's across the upper Midwest.
03:50By Saturday, into the traditional Midwest.
03:51And by Sunday, it rolls into the Northeast.
03:53A lot of the time when we are facing an area of a cold front moving through the Northeast
04:01with an Arctic blast, if that front lingers long enough,
04:04an area of low pressure can ride along that and bring us big trouble with heavy snow.
04:09How are we looking this time?
04:10Well, we are going to include I-95 in at least the area with potential for some snow this weekend.
04:16I don't think it's going to be more than an inch for I-95 at this point.
04:19There's potential still.
04:21But the way things are looking, these fronts are fairly progressive.
04:24They move through and move out to sea.
04:26And therefore, we probably wouldn't be able to see an area of low pressure develop and creep up the front
04:32and bring us any kind of a prolonged period of snow for I-95,
04:37at least for New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston.
04:39Let's look at the models here.
04:40The nature of this big blast of really cold air is going to be significant.
04:44So we have some sub-zero temps here Thursday morning within that pink zone.
04:51But look ahead to Saturday night, Sunday morning.
04:54Widespread sub-zero temperatures rampant across the upper Midwest.
04:59That is the GFS.
05:00And the European, pretty similar message here.
05:03We're going to see daytime highs struggle to climb above zero in areas like Minneapolis on Sunday and Saturday, for that matter.
05:11It will be very close to zero, if not below.
05:13So you might spend the entire weekend below zero in some parts of the upper Midwest in the cold spots.
05:19With that cold air marching east, here we have the first trough rolling through the interior.
05:24That's the Thursday storm system, Wednesday, Thursday, with some snow in the interior.
05:28We'll look at that.
05:29But a really sharp dip in the jet stream in the northern branch, with, again, still some deep troughiness in the southern branch of the jet stream.
05:38That rolls through Sunday into Monday.
05:40And we have a pretty good agreement here Saturday into Sunday as to the footprint of that in the European and the GFS model.
05:46So, with the first trough, you can see pretty decent precipitation amounts Wednesday into Thursday in the interior, but too much down-sloping for I-95.
05:55Let's look ahead.
05:56Another clipper, Friday into Saturday.
05:58Scoots through.
05:59Behind that, here comes the weekend system.
06:01Again, there's just, it's, the front is too fast to move offshore, and we really don't see it dip, the jet stream dip far enough south, farther west, to establish a storm track that would bring us moisture moving north.
06:16It's really just a fast-moving system.
06:19There is potential Saturday night and Sunday for maybe a few tenths of an inch of snow for I-95.
06:24What we know is it will be cold, and there will be snow.
06:29It's going to be cold enough for snow the second half of the weekend, even down into South Jersey, but I really don't think this is going to be a big one by any stretch for I-95.
06:37There will be some accumulating snow.
06:39The plows will be out in the interior, though, where we get some contributions from the Great Lakes as well.
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