Fozz

There will be plenty of frigid cold in the weeks to come. It's hardly even gotten started yet, but I'm sure you've seen that the models are showing some mind boggling lows for Presidents' Day weekend.

I love the 3k run, but I'm still a bit wary of surface temps.

Read their AFD. Very interesting thoughts from them. Low pressure developing off the Carolina coast early Sunday morning will rapidly lift northeast and pass near the 70W/40N Benchmark Sunday afternoon/early evening. Snow will rapidly overspread the region from southwest to northeast Sunday morning and continue Sunday afternoon. Precipitation type with this system should be mainly snow away from the immediate coast. The Outer Cape and Nantucket will likely see mainly rain, while rain/sleet mixing should cut down the snow totals across Eastern MA coast, including parts of Boston. Further west towards the East Slopes and Hartford County, they will be on the northwest edge of the heaviest precipitation, so have issued a Winter Weather Advisory for these areas. Block Island is a tough call because they are west enough to be removed from the strongest warm advection (as opposed to Nantucket and Martha`s Vineyard) so have put them in an Advisory as well. Dynamics couldn`t be more perfect for heavy snow where mixing is not an issue. Omega is maximized in the -12 to -18C Dendritic Growth Zone (as low as -10C for the coastal area due to abundance of salt nuclei) along with 700-925mb speed/directional convergence will result in a 3 to 4 hour window of impressive frontogenesis. This is a strong signal for convective snow and where mixing is not an issue, could easily see 2 to maybe even 3 inches per hour snowfall rate. So even giving the progressive nature of the system, snow could easily pile up and accumulate 7 to 10 inches in the most persistent mesoscale bands. Key issue that we have been grappling with is where the rain/snow line would set up. With such a robust system, the thinking is that it will bring in quite a bit of warm air out ahead of it to preclude snow for most of the time for the Outer Cape and Nantucket. The 00z and 12z HREF have both been very bullish with intense snowfall rates over the Cape and Islands. The global ensemble guidance is also very bullish with the probability of 3 and even 6 inch plus snowfall over the Cape and Islands. However, wet bulb temperature bottoms out around 32-34F across the Cape and Islands even according to the NAM. So thinking at best high-end Advisory/very low-end Warning snowfall for the Inner Cape and possibly no more than a couple inches for the Outer Cape and the Islands. The fact that the snow is falling during the daytime hours also makes it harder to accumulate. In addition, I did lower the snow totals over the immediate Boston area and much of the Eastern MA coast. With the winds initially out of the E and NE during precip onset, snow ratios will be in the 5-7:1 range initially but gradually increase to around 10:1 as winds back to the N by 20-21z. As for the interior, higher SLRs are expected generally 12-15:1. QPF wise, expect generally 0.3 to 0.5 inches west of Worcester and 0.5 to 1 inch over SE MA and RI. Overall, highest snowfall totals should be from NE CT to Worcester to Metrowest Boston in the order of 6 to 9 inches where the mesoscale banding coincides with a thermal profile that minimizes mixing. Temperatures wise, have used Hi-Res Ensemble Forecast (HREF) to populate the hourly temperatures given that the most reasonable way to get around uncertainty with the thermal profile is using an ensemble approach. It should be noted here that the forecast temps by the HREF does not correspond with the most likely precip type (snow) across SE MA, which is a red flag against forecasting too much snow especially over the Outer Cape and the Islands. https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=BOX&issuedby=BOX&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1&highlight=off

The HRRR was supposed to bury me the last storm.

H5 is quite the visible improvement it seems.

I was too young in 1996, but TWC played most of those same Trammell Starks tunes again in the fall of 2002, when I had a strong feeling that we were about to have a very good winter. Brings back so many good memories.

Lol that is practically a repeat of this past week.

The fact that I know who the Rippingtons are says everything about how much I was glued to TWC back in the day.

This is shaping up to be the perfect chance to compensate those of us who were screwed on Monday.

Yeah the signal has been there for some time, but until the last few runs it looked like nothing eventful, and now suddenly a foot of snow is a possibility. I also do recall early Feb 2003. A nice 4-8" storm for most of the northeast cities, but I remember being shocked when the Weather Channel reported the New England totals, which seemed to happen so fast.

This storm is sneaking up on us almost as fast as January 2000 in the mid-Atlantic.

With the 10:1 map it's actually remarkably even throughout nearly the entire northeast and even much of the mid-Atlantic. You'll be amazed at the uniformity of it.

A nice snow shower just passed. It was a fun little burst of snow.

Oh man... if reality is even half this good in NNE then I'll be over the moon. I should be there Friday.

It doesn’t get any more perfect than this. Damn. EDIT: That's the 12z run. We'll see if 0z holds.

Why is it good?

I was just going to ask @PhineasC, how would you be able to spend the bulk of your winters in NH if you have school aged kids? Unless you plan to send them to school there. Of course with the virus, everything is remote, but eventually schools will fully open up again.

#ScottyDoesntKnow

I was concerned about the CF even in the days leading up to the storm. A lot of models had that red flag, but I was told not to worry about it, and that I’d be far enough west/inland. I should’ve listened more to my own doubts.

That’s a lot of rain for the same places that were screwed in yesterday’s storm. Meanwhile those who were buried get a very nice refresher on that run. The rich keep getting richer.

That snow hole east of Springfield makes me feel a little better.

I’ll be in town, staying in a nice Victorian home.

It's a very lazy way of putting it together, especially since they don't account for the timing of the observations. They'll have 4pm reports and count them as final totals if there aren't newer numbers, and we all know that's absurd and inaccurate to the extreme.

As I mentioned in the storm thread, I'll be going up to Vermont and I have a place booked in Northfield, which is not far from Montpelier. I'm planning to stay for the rest of the month, and maybe into March. Hoping to see a lot of snow up there, and I especially look forward to the skiing. I followed quarantine and tested COVID negative, so in terms of pandemic guidelines I'm all set.

Where I came from, in the mid-Atlantic a lot of people would appreciate a 6” storm even if it was less than expected. I’m starting to get a little more spoiled now that I’m up here, but it’s the closeness to those 12”+ totals that really gets to me.