This thing is one bad turn away from having an few outer rainbands scrape portions of the eastern seaboard. At the very least, this will be a decent surf/tidal event. The wording is warranted, IMO.
Notable changes for our coastal folks on the 18z GFS and ICON. Both nudge west and the GFS puts a steady easterly flow on the beaches. Would be rip current city.
Give me a pattern changing 1" - 3" event the week before Christmas. Then a nice 6" - 10" cold powder event on Christmas Day afternoon that sticks around for a week.
Sneaky severe day today:
Surface CAPE 3,000 + across most of the area
LI -6 or better east of US 15
High PWATs w/ some mid level drying to aid propagation of isolated wet microbursts.
Surface lapse rates are decent
Might see a few decent cells fire along some boundary.
Would vastly prefer numerous light to moderate events with good cold that maintain some semblance of a snow pack, versus one big event that melts off in 2 days.
Late breaking news, but we managed to get Sykesville mesonet site in Carroll County online just before the storms arrived:
https://mesonet.umd.edu/station?stid=MDMSNT-29
Big credit to @wxmeddler and it was great to see @wxmvpete again!