BuffaloWeather

BING NWS on LES 345 AM Update... Behind the front, a very cold air mass will descend across the Northeast on Christmas day including snow showers/flurries, with highs in the 20s and lows in the teens and single digits going into the weekend. There will also be a heightened potential for lake effect snow. At this time it appears the flow pattern will be more southwesterly, which will put the area most at risk into western NY and portions of the Finger Lakes from Lake Erie, and from northern Oneida County up to Watertown from Lake Ontario. Conditions look increasingly favorable for a heavy lake effect snow event as very cold temperatures aloft, -13 to -16 deg C, advects across a long fetch of Erie and Ontario. Cleveland NWS .LONG TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH MONDAY/... As previously discussed in the short term forecast, lake effect showers will persist across the snowbelt area for the beginning of the long term forecast. Current models suggest moderate lake induced instability and high equilibrium levels will aid in maintaining organized lake effect snow bands across Lake Erie through Saturday morning. Saturday morning into the early afternoon, a high pressure will build over the area from the south, resulting in winds shifting to southwesterly. This shift in wind should slowly move the greatest chance of lake effect snow out to the northeast and out of our area. This lake effect system is expected to persist for over 24 hours, resulting in a likely significant lake effect snow event. This event will need to continue to be monitored, as any shift in the steering flow would result in possible changes to areas impacted along with snowfall totals. At this point the snowfall totals remain uncertain with the lake effect precipitation.

That track would lead to heavy LES into metro, not NE Ohio, weird placement of max QPF.

GEFS farther east

GEM was weird. Went farther west and still W/NW wind. Tossed

they did it in 2010 with winter weather adv and lake snow warning.

I can see it, has very strong dynamics. Will have strong snowfall rates. Its not out of realm of possibilities.

All midnight models look good for a near WSW synoptic event, followed by major LES event.

GFS with a 3 foot maximum in southtowns

New threads

WSW in effect for 1'+ of snow for the area Forecast discussion: .LONG TERM /THURSDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY/... ...Heavy Lake Effect Snow Possible Christmas through December 26... The aforementioned system will started to rapidly wrap colder air into the area as the increasingly-curved upper jet structure advances northward through the area on Thursday night. This will rapidly drop 850 hPa temperatures from SW to NE across the area as it does so and change precipitation from rain to snow long before synoptic moisture peels away. This will result in a few inches of snow for almost the entire area before the deeper moisture associated with the system departs. As progressively colder air moves into the region with cyclonic flow entrenched in the area, flow in the 925-850 hPa layer turns southwest on Christmas Day on all guidance, including even the ECMWF at this point (just with a bit of a lag relative to the GFS/Canadian global). Model soundings suggest a deep unstable layer that fully bisects the dendritic growth layer and weak shear within the unstable moist layer. This should allow for good dominant banding to develop first down the length of Lake Erie then a few hours later down Lake Ontario. The persistence of the flow regime on the Canadian is particularly troubling, as the layer averaged flow in the 925-850 hPa layer suggests banding off of Lake Erie right into the Buffalo metro area from Friday right into Saturday for the majority of the time period. While this may be a worst case scenario, it`s also a plausible scenario, as the GFS has been suggesting this for several runs, and the ECMWF layer-averaged flow has taken on a southerly component that makes confidence on lake effect banding making it northward toward the Buffalo metro area very plausible. With the placement of the band in mind, it comes down to snow production efficiency. Bufkit soundings suggest equilibrium levels up toward 10-11 kft by Friday with a lake to 850 hPa delta T of roughly 20C, which combined with cyclonic flow a saturated dendritic layer should result in bands producing 2" per hour snowfall. Depending upon their residency in a particular spot, that could result in a foot or two of snow easily NE of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, however some shifting of the bands will result in a threat of 9" or more over a broad enough area with confidence commiserate for a winter storm watch for lake effect snow. Watches were thus issued for Thursday night into Saturday in both locations. Lighter lake snows will linger into Sunday and eventually fall apart as warm advection ahead of the next system to affect the area turns flow southerly and warms temperatures into the start of next week.

It's officially winter today and winter solstice. Temps look right around normal for this time of year which should lead to some chances of snow. An up and down pattern looks to be the staple of this coming winter. Looks like we get a good cold shot this weekend with chance of synoptic event and LES on the backside. Indices look good, there will be shots of snow the next few weeks.

I lived in Cheektowaga for this one, epic event off both lakes. https://www.weather.gov/buf/lesEventArchive?season=2001-2002&event=B

Way too early to pinpoint exact locations need to wait until Weds at earliest.

Wolfie posting local news before the Buffalo peeps, I'm disappointed in you guys.

It works on my gaming PC that I built, but this thing is a beast. Doesn't work on anything else.

I know its been discussed already but my god that is the worst radar I have ever seen in my life. Did we go back to the 1970s with that thing....?????

Nice band north of Buffalo now, any snow out of that?

You can go about 5-10 miles north of any model with lake snow bands when lake temps are in the lower 40s still due to thermal troughing. I like where I sit and most of Erie county would have at least a foot of snow.

Yeah I know but figured it would lake effect snow watch, not winter storm watch unless those are retired? I thought they brought them back this year.

Should be some moving bands, but looks to lock in Buffalo into southtowns for quite awhile at end of loop https://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/cmdn/pcpn_type/pcpn_type_gem_reg.html

From OSU I looked casually the past few day but I thought Christmas morning into evening looked really nice for buf and the immediate Southtowns

Separate. I'll do 2 new threads. One for general and one for the LES event.

Will start a new thread for the lake effect tonight.