The power of lake effect: Upstate NY will be one of snowiest US spots this week
Syracuse, N.Y. -- Snow is expected to fall from New Mexico to Maine over the next two days, but almost nowhere as heavily as in Upstate New York.
Thanks to lake effect snow from the Great Lakes, Upstate New York and Michigan's Upper Peninsula could see close to a foot of snow in isolated areas through 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Most areas over the 2,300-mile swath of snowfall will get an inch or two.
That long stretch of snow is caused by cold polar air dipping as far south as Texas and bumping into a warmer air mass that's pulling in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
"What you're looking at here is the boundary zone of warm air moving north from the Gulf and cold air moving south from Canada," said Mark Wysocki, New York state climatologist. "You can see how that boundary stretches from the southern plains to the Great Lakes."
Another system, a coastal storm that is moving along the East Coast today, will interact with that boundary of cold and warm air. As that coastal storm moves off Cape Cod Tuesday night, it will pull cold air across the Great Lakes, generating lake effect snow in Michigan and New York.
Where the heaviest snow ends up depends upon the wind direction, Wysocki said. The National Weather Service is predicting winds from the northwest, so the heaviest snow in Upstate New York would be in Central New York. But even slight changes in wind direction could push that snow to the north or south, Wysocki said.
"It could be from Tully up to Fulton and Oswego," he said. "It's what we call a forecaster's nightmare."
Source