A winter storm that races from the Midwest to the East Coast will lead to accumulating snow in major cities. AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish breaks down the details.
00:00It's time for the forecast feed, and as we close out this week, we are looking ahead to our first accumulating snow of the season in Philadelphia, New York City, and probably Boston.
00:11But we're also going to be dealing with some more really cold air, frigid air that immediately follows this system.
00:18Then we're going to see a big warm-up from the frigid to the 40s for many in the northeast gradually next week.
00:25I think sometimes it's easy to kind of expect the warmth too soon.
00:29We're going to have a couple of really cold days, but by mid and latter parts of the week, we're going to warm up.
00:34Let's take a look at this first clipper. Actually, it's the second clipper in a series, but the first clipper is moving through right now, racing through the mid-Atlantic coast and weakening.
00:45So what gets our attention is the second clipper. That's the one that's going to bring us some accumulating snow to I-95.
00:51We've already seen significant snow this season down in southern Virginia on two occasions near the North Carolina line, even in low elevations down the sea level.
01:00But there's been kind of a hole on the map for snow from Philadelphia and areas like Wilmington, Delaware, up to New York City, and even into Boston and points south.
01:09But as we take a look at this next disturbance, so the clipper number one that moved through the Midwest, again, in a path very similar to the second clipper, it's really weakened.
01:21The first one is flattening out, and it's not digging much deeper. It's actually lifting away.
01:27Here's the NAM showing that the big bright color blob there over Morgantown, West Virginia.
01:32That's an area of stronger vorticity, spin in the atmosphere.
01:35You'll notice it doesn't really dig any farther south. It just goes east and pulls out.
01:39And then the European, similar story.
01:41We're not going to find much disagreement between those models in the short term.
01:44But as we look at the next clipper, again, it takes a very similar path through the Midwest and the plains.
01:51But then after cruising through the Ohio Valley, this really amplifies.
01:56It continues to dig Sunday, 7 p.m., compared to what we're doing with the first one.
02:03Here's, again, 7 p.m. Friday compared to 7 p.m. Sunday.
02:07Very different appearance here with the depth of the trough as this amplifies.
02:12And it still moves quickly. It races east.
02:16It's not going to be with us for long, but it will be a bit of a strengthening system as it reaches I-95.
02:23And the business side of the storm is actually going to be before the trough arrives.
02:27So it's really Saturday night to Sunday morning.
02:30But at least during that time, the storm will be in a posture of strengthening with a deepening trough at that time.
02:36So we're going to begin to see this scare up a little more lift in the atmosphere east of the trough.
02:41And that will lead to accumulating snow for I-95.
02:45It would actually be a bigger snowstorm about 500 miles farther east or 800 miles farther east.
02:50But, again, that's out over the ocean and not much of an issue.
02:53So let's take a look at what this looks like here with the actual deterministic snowfall forecast.
02:58Clipper number one, after bringing some snow to the Midwest, it really dries up here.
03:03You can see as we kind of go back in time, West Virginia, Virginia, not much to see out there.
03:08Here's the NAM.
03:09You can see how that just kind of dried up.
03:11And we're seeing a little bit of light rain and snow mixed in parts of Virginia.
03:14Number two digs in, though.
03:15And this is in a posture of strengthening as it reaches the east coast.
03:19There will be a zone here where there's going to be some generally some downsloping.
03:26So there's an area where there's kind of not going to be a whole lot under an inch for some from maybe Williamsport, PA, down into central Maryland.
03:35More to the west in the mountains in Garrett County.
03:37More to the east because of strengthening.
03:39But there's going to be this zone where you get less than an inch.
03:42And our map's going to reflect that actually includes the area near the AccuWeather corporate headquarters here in State College, PA, where we're going to see a little bit of snow, but probably less than an inch.
03:51But this increases Sunday morning.
03:53It's with us just briefly.
03:55It won't be here long.
03:56But for I-95 with the strengthening trough, as we showed you, we're going to see some snow.
04:01So here's the GFS model.
04:03And you can see pretty decent snow west.
04:05Look at Elkins, West Virginia.
04:077.8 inches of snow.
04:08Then there's this area with maybe an inch or less for some from Harrisburg up into Williamsport.
04:14But then you get into this area where there's one to three, at least in the GFS model.
04:19Again, I have concerns about locking Boston into a full inch of snow.
04:23We're going to hedge it toward a one to three inch forecast, but one inch more likely than anything more than that in Boston.
04:29Again, we're going to see a higher confidence one to three in New York City and in Philadelphia than in Boston.
04:34Here's the NAMM.
04:35The NAMM brings us, again, a one to three inch snowfall for much of the area, including about an inch in Baltimore, 1.2 in Philly, 1.3 in Trenton, only 0.6 in New York, and a limited snow in to Boston, but two inches down in areas like Atlantic City.
04:53Now, the European has had a pretty good track record with this particular storm, at least in its consistency.
05:01It's slowly ramping things up, and this is a motivator in us introducing a little zone here with three or more inches.
05:08Look at this.
05:09The European brings, again, five to some spots even locally, six inches of snow there into eastern parts of West Virginia.
05:17Here's the well-agreed-upon down-sloping zone, where we're just not going to see a whole lot.
05:23And then, overall, as the storm begins to ramp up, we're going to begin to see some three to sixes, possibly in the European.
05:323.6 in Philly, 4.2 in Baltimore, 3.2 in Atlantic City.
05:38Cape May, 2.5.
05:40So, the message here is that, again, we have some areas with potential for three or more inches, 2.4 in New York, 0.7 in Boston.
05:49So, again, just one more thing to keep in mind.
05:52As this plays out here, I don't think we're going to see a whole lot west of, near the Susquehanna River,
05:57but we're going to see some pretty good snow in some areas.
06:00And a quick look at our actual forecast for this storm before I take a quick, quick look ahead to next week.
06:07I'm going to zoom in to the northeast here, just to show more detailed.
06:12One to three inches for the big cities, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York.
06:15Probably an inch in Boston, hopefully.
06:17But we're looking at three or more inches a little farther south in this area of South Jersey, Central Delaware, and the eastern part of Maryland.
06:26That's where there's potential.
06:27A quick look at the lake effect snow.
06:28This is something that we're going to see time and time again with patterns like these.
06:31Again, in some areas south of Erie, seeing quite a bit more than in the city itself, but 6 to 12 inches possible for some.
06:39I wanted to briefly look at this, though.
06:41Cold has been holding, but look at this.
06:42We see a positive height anomaly.
06:45The atmosphere is going to be increasingly thick and warmer late next week.
06:50The atmosphere is going to be very thick and warmer late next week.
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