I can almost hear the collective groan of thousands throughout the New Jersey and New York City area. Yes, snow is returning to the forecast and it will bring the potential for a few inches of snow on this coming Friday. A low pressure system approaching from the Ohio Valley will move through the Mid Atlantic states on Friday, spreading moisture north of it into the Northern Mid Atlantic states. As moisture surges north into the cold sector, snow will develop within a small axis from West to East on Friday.
While the low pressure system is fairly weak, and passing well to our south, the increase in moisture and lift should be just enough to allow for snow to develop. Light snow is expected as early as Friday morning, especially over Western parts of the forecast area. With increased lift for precipitation, steady snow is expected during the day on Friday. The low pressure system will eventually shift offshore, allowing for lightening precipitation and clearing overnight Friday into Saturday.
Despite that fact that we continue to work farther and farther away from Winter with each passing day, the pattern over the next week will feature a transitional — and colder than normal — airmass on multiple days. As we mentioned last week, the presence of high latitude blocking will be the main culprit in driving cold air southward from Canada into the Northern 1/3 of the United States. Despite a changing sun angle and nearly completely melted snowpack, the potential for cold and at least some snow is anticipated to continue for the next 7 to 10 days. This week will feature a transition from a benign pattern into a more stormy one.
After a warm and pleasant day on Monday, a frontal boundary is expected to pass the area on Tuesday with blustery winds and showers which may end as snow showers throughout the area. This will all be owing to the southward extension of a lobe of the Polar Vortex, which will be elongating and setting up shop over Southeast Canada. Very cold air — 850mb temperatures of nearly -30 C — will be bottled up just to the north of New England. And frontal boundaries will progressively seep this air southward into our area at times.
7:45pm: The band that was in PA weakened somewhat, but is still reaching the area. Some light snow is possible over the next hour or so, but it shouldn’t accumulate more than a couple to a few tenths of an inch, at most. Some areas may only see a few flurries. Snow should be over for the whole area by 9:00pm, the latest.
This will be our second to last update; our last post will have some final snow totals across the area. It seems that NYC finished with around 8″ of snow, but we will await the final numbers.
5:50pm: As of 4:00pm, Central Park had 7″ of snow from this storm. Some moderate bands of snow have passed through since then, but snow is lightening up now.
The snow will continue to be light to perhaps very light for the next hour, but we are also watching one more band of snow in Eastern PA, which looks to be moderate to heavy. 700mb frontogenesis is pretty strong with this band, so it certainly has legs to give another 1-2″ for whoever gets in the band. The big question is how far east it moves, so we will be monitoring it.
SPC Mesoanalysis shows strong 700mb frontogenesis with a moderate to heavy snow band in Eastern PA.
2:45pm: As of 1:00pm, Central Park already had 5.5″ of snow, so they are easily over 6″ for this storm. La Guardia had 4″, but they just reported 2″ in the past hour! So they are probably also over 6″ for the storm.
There is a brief lull in the action in some spots as some subsidence has developed behind the banding. However, wave two is starting to strengthen, so snow should be filling back in. There won’t be any more heavy snow, but rather light to moderate snow that still accumulates somewhat efficiently due to a high snow to liquid ratio. Another 2-3″ is expected in most locations before it tapers off around 7:00. Some localized areas, perhaps in parts of Long Island or Central and Southern New Jersey could pick up another 3-4″.
1:30pm: The heavy bands of snow have reached NYC and all of NE NJ, and the band actually strengthened in northern Long Island. Snowfall rates of 1-2″ per hour are occurring, with visibilities below 1/4 of a mile. Stay off the roads if you can!
1:00pm: Whiteout conditions are being reported in NE NJ with the very heavy band of snow that is slowly pressing SE. Near-whiteout conditions can be expected within the next half hour in most of the NYC area, Middlesex County, Union, Staten Island, and parts of Long Island as well.
Radar as of 12:55pm shows a very heavy band of snow pressing down towards NYC. (Courtesy of Accuweather).
12:40pm: Dry air is filtering in on the north side of the system, but this is actually enhancing the banding towards NYC, because of the “squeeze” play it creates and thus more lift. Most of N NJ, NYC, and Long Island are about to have their heaviest snowfall rates of the storm — some spots could get 1-2″/hr rates for an hour or two.
9:30am: After a brief lull in the action in parts of NYC, the snow has become heavier again. This is because the strongest lift from wave one moved north of the area, while wave two was still organizing, so there was a lull in between. But notice how how the radar has really filled in and increased in intensity over the past 10-20 minutes.
Radar imagery as of 9:25am, courtesy of Accuweather.
What’s also important to note is that temperatures are falling quickly. This means that any main roads which were still only slushy will immediately become snow-covered. Temperatures have generally fallen below 30 degrees in most areas, and it was actually 28 in NYC at 9:00am. Any areas who are still above 30 degrees will fall into the upper 20s by 10:00am. This is consistent with the atmospheric profile becoming colder, which favors a finer, fluffier snow as opposed to the heavy wet snow. This snow tends to accumulate very efficiently. 6″+ of snow is likely in the heavier bands.
8:30am: Regional radar shows bands of heavy snow developing from Southeastern PA to Southern Long Island including Central New Jersey. These bands feature heavy snow and greatly reduced visibility. Deteriorating road conditions are occurring. Please travel carefully if you must.
These bands of heavy snow are expected to continue over the same areas over the next few hours — creating localized gradients of snowfall. Newer high resolution models indicate the potential for 4 to 6 inches of snow in many areas, with 6 or more inches in bands of heavier snow.
On the heels of a strong southwest flow event which left the area under more snow and sleet this Tuesday into Wednesday morning, a low pressure system is forecast to develop late Wednesday into Thursday and deliver another round of snow. This time, it looks more significant in terms of snowfall accumulations. As a cold front sinks south of the area Wednesday, mid level energy will shift from the Central United States eastward, forcing the development of a low pressure system from the Southeast States into the Mid Atlantic.
A thermal gradient, or baroclinic zone, will be positioned from the Ohio Valley through the Mid Atlantic and Northeast, serving as a highway for the development of precipitation. As the mid level jet dynamics are enhanced Thursday, snow will become more widespread throughout the Mid Atlantic and Northeast United States. On the northern periphery of the forcing for moderate to heavy precipitation, a band of moderate to heavy snow is likely to develop.
Programming Note: We will have a Storm Total Snowfall forecast for release around 11:00pm tonight.
Hi friends! Our website uses cookies to provide an optimal browsing experience for you. New "Cookie Consent" laws mandate us to inform you of this. As long as you're cool with it, just hit OK. You'll only see this message once.
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
Essential Website Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
Other external services
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
