00:00Well, here on the forecast feed, we're going to take a look into the more distant future.
00:05Late next week, we're milder into the weekend across the eastern U.S. and the Midwest with rain for many.
00:12Eventually, some snow returns for some into the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, on the backside of this weekend storm system.
00:18But we're a little more interested in the late part of next week, when cold air will be back in place.
00:24We're going to have an active storm track, and a few of the ingredients are in place for potential for some snow.
00:32Not everything is necessarily exactly where it needs to be for us to see a significant East Coast winter storm.
00:39But some of these ingredients are on the countertop, and if they come together the right way, we could be looking at a significant storm.
00:45So let's take a look at this. Before we get into the details, I want to look at the brief setup here for this weekend.
00:50And again, it's hard to characterize the whole weekend in one single graphic.
00:55A lot of the precipitation here that we're highlighting is kind of weighted toward more of a Saturday feel here.
01:02Some showers and storms will be pushing through the southeastern U.S.
01:04Rain and milder air for the eastern U.S., and behind the system, colder air will charge back in.
01:10So it's also going to continue to be wet up into parts of the northwest with some snow in the Cascades.
01:15Cool and dry in the southwest, but that's the flavor of the weekend, especially Saturday.
01:21Sunday we begin to see a drying trend, but one thing for the weekend, again, a much warmer Saturday and wetter weather out there.
01:28We want to look beyond that, though, as what really has our attention is the extended forecast.
01:33So here we are with the weekend.
01:34You can see our storm system is tracking so far northeast.
01:38That opens the door for the warmer weather for the East Coast.
01:40And to no surprise, it's rain, two waves of it, some severe weather at times Thursday evening and Friday evening down into the lower Mississippi Valley.
01:48Thursday will be a little farther west, so we have concerns there.
01:51And we're talking about that quite a bit on AccuWeather.com, the AccuWeather app, and other AccuWeather updates here on the AccuWeather network.
01:58But looking beyond that storm system, you can see it begins to deliver some colder air once again.
02:02And if we look at temperatures, we're going from milder.
02:07This is technically a map of 850 millibars, so about a mile up into the atmosphere or so.
02:14As we take you up around 850 millibars, we're looking at the temperatures.
02:22And overall, if we're above average or below average, it's going to be shaded in either blue or red.
02:29So about 5,000 feet up into the atmosphere, about a mile up there.
02:32And obviously, with this storm track this weekend cutting so abruptly to the Great Lakes, anybody east of there, and even along the storm track, warmer than average.
02:43So this is the January thaw, and this is the warmer pattern, the milder pattern for Saturday.
02:49And into Sunday, our front kicks through.
02:51Behind the rain, you can see the cooler air charging back into the south.
02:56It's going to turn more seasonably cold for the northeast as well for Sunday.
03:01And again, a lot of the time for you along I-95, it takes time for the colder air to actually reach the I-95.
03:07You get downsloping.
03:09That's a couple of processes that kind of chew away at the chill.
03:12But if you're marked in white here, you know, say Ohio, that's just an average setup for January.
03:17That's cold.
03:17If you're in yellow, maybe not quite as cold as the norm.
03:20And if you're in the red, that's where the warmth builds.
03:22So early next week, Tuesday into Wednesday, you could see the theme warmer in the west, mild in the New England states,
03:31but colder than average into the Ohio and Mississippi Valley as the Great Lakes region.
03:37And eventually into Thursday, you could see a pretty good departure from normal with a negative anomaly,
03:44colder than average weather for the eastern U.S. building back in.
03:48And that's going to be tied to a pretty deep trough.
03:51This big trough here is going to be where we find, again, a big ridge in the west with the warmth, deep trough in the east.
03:58It's a pretty significant, amplified, full-latitude trough, allowing that very cold air to spill back down.
04:04And unlike the persistent cold that we had for much of December, you know, it's coming in waves.
04:10So we get a warmer weekend, a colder spell, temperatures up and down here, more changeable weather day-to-day and week-to-week here this January.
04:17And that shoe fits.
04:19That's pretty common here for weather in the mid-latitudes here in the United States in the winter months.
04:23But what really gets our attention is not this first wave that brings the cold in.
04:30You can see that's going to come with some snow showers in some areas, some rain showers in the gray zone here in New Jersey,
04:37down into the Carolinas, ending as maybe a few snowflakes in the northeast.
04:41But that's the front that brings limited precipitation, some areas with a coating to an inch of snow,
04:46maybe a little more near the Great Lakes.
04:47But the cold front is going to leave the cold air in place.
04:52And that's going to give us, as I go back and forth to the different maps here, that pretty significant negative anomaly.
04:58Colder than average weather Thursday night to Friday across the east.
05:02That's the table setter for what could become a more interesting event here.
05:07We need to find the next shortwave, the next disturbance.
05:10These bright colors here, we're looking at about 20,000 feet up into the atmosphere, 500 millibars way up there.
05:15And this is going to be where we find the disturbance that digs in.
05:21In the GFS, we see a relatively low amplitude.
05:25In other words, it only digs so far to the south, maybe to the Ohio River, this trough here.
05:30And that's going to be moving east.
05:31That would scare up some snow for some.
05:33But look at the European model.
05:35It's a much deeper trough tied to this interior disturbance.
05:39I'm going to go back here.
05:40It comes out of the Canadian Rockies Thursday morning.
05:43And in the GFS, it splits.
05:46A chunk of it goes into the Great Basin, into Nevada, gets lost.
05:50Another chunk of it comes into the Great Lakes.
05:52With the European, it stays together.
05:55And it's more consolidated.
05:57It digs all the way down to the Gulf Coast.
06:00And here's the second piece that I'm focused on.
06:03It stays a bit more together.
06:05It doesn't break off quite as much.
06:07A chunk of it moves into New Mexico.
06:08But it's a little more together.
06:10And that allows for a deeper dig.
06:13And while the GFS brings us some precipitation in the interior, not much for I-95, the European
06:18digs it down.
06:19And here we can see at least some of the thumbprints of at least a storm that could be.
06:26You get a little more moisture.
06:27Some precipitation for the East Coast.
06:29Some snow in the Ohio Valley, West Virginia, up into parts of southern sections of New England.
06:33So I'm going to end with this graphic here that at least talks about the scenarios.
06:38If this comes up the coast, we could be dealing with a snowstorm.
06:41It may get suppressed south.
06:43It could get squashed, in which we don't see much going on.
06:45But it's just something to watch in the week to come.
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