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  • 8 hours ago
AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish breaks down the details that forecasters are watching to determine how much snow may fall in the Northeast on the final Sunday of February.
Transcript
00:00Here on the forecast feed, we want to give you an update on the potential, and the key
00:05word there is potential for weekend snow, Sunday and Monday along the east coast of
00:10the U.S. There will be some snow around. We have a couple of disturbances moving through,
00:14but the question is, will there be a powerhouse coastal storm? And again, there was pretty
00:19good alignment among many models on Tuesday late afternoon and mid-afternoon, and we talked
00:25about that, but the European, the primary European model was never on board. It was kind of standing
00:31alone. We want to take a look at where this storm is and its various fragmented pieces at this point,
00:37still a long ways away, and again, the most likely scenario may be hedging a little more toward this
00:44not being a big storm. So the fiction aspect of this here, we are likely to see this probably just
00:51a little too far east, a little too late in the game to develop to really bring a big payoff
00:56for significant east coast snow, but it's not a done deal yet. So one thing for the weekend,
01:02there is potential for snow for the coastal northeast, and even if it is a little offshore,
01:07there will likely at least be some snow for south Jersey up into places like Long Island,
01:13southeast parts of Massachusetts, Sunday into Monday into southeast New England, but are we looking
01:18at one to three inches of snow, or are we looking at something far greater, like double-digit
01:24accumulations? So that's what we want to get into here. So overall, let's take a look at the models,
01:29then we'll take a look at some of our forecasts here, a few of our forecast graphics internally.
01:35So I want to go back in time. Here we have the GFS, and here is the European. Similar to
01:42yesterday,
01:42the European has been consistent, while other models have been tending toward the European,
01:48but the GFS does have a pretty powerful storm. It's a little farther southeast compared to where
01:54it was, you know, I'm just going to plot an actual low here, a little southeast of where it was
02:0024
02:00hours ago. But regardless, the European is still not as organized and not as strong, and there's still
02:10a trough there and an area of low pressure that it gets going, but it's pretty anemic looking compared
02:14to the slightly more aggressive solutions like the GFS. So regardless, if we take the GFS solution,
02:21which would be something closer to a high-impact event, not as big of a deal as it would have
02:26been
02:2624 hours earlier, but let's track this back in time. We're going to track this back, pressing pause,
02:32Saturday night to Sunday morning. We can highlight there is the primary shortwave here. And again,
02:39there would be a couple of contributions here, contributors, a northern branch and a southern
02:44branch feature. But the primary wave that would drive this system, here we are Thursday, midday,
02:52it would be out here over British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. Let's go back a little farther
02:57to show you where it is now. And basically, it would be pooling southward right now. This is the relevant
03:04shortwave, the disturbance that's just entering the North American landmass. And it's going to get
03:08sampled a little bit better by upper level, well, we're going to get more weather balloons that
03:14get eyes on this, and they are able to sample the atmosphere as this moves into parts of the
03:20southwest sections of Canada and the northwestern US. And again, it'll be sampled better as it moves
03:25over land. So it's still a long ways away. But as we watch this evolve in the European or in
03:33the GFS
03:34model, here it digs, it really gets moving pretty rapidly to the southeast this weekend. Sunday
03:39morning, here's your area of low pressure aloft. Here's the shortwave digging down through St. Louis,
03:45and it races southeast. The trough goes negative, negative tilt, northwest to southeast. You think
03:52of that old Y equals MX plus B, remember that from maybe high school math? If it's tilted down,
03:59negative slope, that's the tilt that we're talking about. And those are more aggressive storms when
04:04they tilt northwest to southeast, as opposed to when they're tilted from southwest to northeast.
04:09So this would be still a fairly aggressive storm, but it's trending a little farther south, a little
04:13bit farther south and east. One of the pieces that Bernie's been tracking, and I agree with him here,
04:19is this area of low pressure that precedes that. If that lingers too long, it would drive it all the
04:26way to the south. It does get out of the way for this storm to move in, but it doesn't
04:33necessarily
04:34hug the coast enough for us to see this produce a big, significant snow. Now, this really spins up.
04:40Let's take a look at the European in contrast. Here you can see, here comes our shortwave.
04:44It's not as pesky, not as, there's the GFS in east central parts of South Dakota. Here is the
04:51European. As it moves farther southeast Sunday morning, here we have a sharpening trough with the
04:58GFS, a sharpening trough with the European. It's a little more open, really flabby looking here.
05:03And you can see that as that digs down to the southeast, it is not as sharp. The trough is
05:10just
05:10shaped too broad to really significantly amplify and rapidly strengthen near the coast. So let's look
05:17at some model comparisons. Here's the GFS, one of the slightly more interesting scenarios. It brings
05:23significant snow to the Atlantic City area, to South Delaware. Now, keep in mind, some of these
05:28areas, marginal cold temperatures here in place. The storm would manufacture some of its own cold air
05:34if this were the solution that verified. But it still largely misses Philadelphia and New York
05:39regarding big snow. The European, this is out to sea. This is an out to sea scenario. It doesn't even
05:44bring snow to Cape Cod. The GFS AI, it is also trending out to sea compared to yesterday in a
05:53big way. The European AI, it is brushing South Jersey and Delmarva with the rain-snow mix ending
06:00as snow. The Canadian model, this is still a hard hit there in South Jersey. And the UK met another
06:06opinion. Reasonable amount of snow in South Jersey, but it really misses New York City. So quick look at
06:10some snowfall amounts. I have this trimmed down to a 36-hour window, so we're just only looking at
06:15this storm, and it's subtracting out the snow that will have fallen Friday. You're going to see some
06:20snow in New England on Friday. But let's subtract that out, just looking at a 24-hour accumulation.
06:25Pretty modest there in the GFS. Light snow in the interior with the interior disturbance.
06:30There's the European, it's out to sea. But there will be some accumulating snow in Central and
06:34Western Pennsylvania. The Canadian, it's seven inches of snow in Atlantic City, but just maybe three in
06:39New York. And the UK met, it misses New York, but it does bring several inches to South Jersey. So
06:44we got to keep an eye on this here, and we're going to close this out with a look at,
06:48again, our forecast.
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