Significant snowstorm likely near the coast on Saturday
The rollercoaster with the model runs has continued today, with regards to Saturday’s winter storm. However, for the most part, guidance continues to trend west, and there are some reasons to believe that will continue. There is still a limit as to how far west this can go, though, and the cutoff to the west looks pretty sharp, so this may only be a “major” snowstorm for Eastern Long Island. Still, it’s looking like a snowier Saturday than first thought a few days ago.
Generally speaking over the past few days, the models have become much more impressive with the strength of the initial shortwave that entered the US from the Pacific. It’s now in the southern stream and tapping into a lot of Gulf of Mexico moisture, leading to some strong thunderstorms in the deep South. Sometimes what happens here is that once the models realize that there is plenty of convection going on, the latent heat in the atmosphere increases, which leads to higher heights along the East Coast and thus further northwest shifts. This appears to be happening in today’s model guidance.
