Thursday, February 7, 2013

Historic Northeast Coastal Storm Update -- 9:00 PM 2/7

This historic Northeast coastal storm continues to be on track to produce nearly 3 feet of snow for parts of New England.


Prognosis... Alberta clipper continues to progress eastward after impacting Midwest and Great Lakes with accumulating snow. Worth noting is earlier than normal rain-to-snow transition in parts of the Lower Great Lakes, something that could have an impact on the Northeast. Southern stream includes the main part of the system, with 700 millibar winds very elevated in the chart on the left. Latest analysis has center of this piece of energy just off the Gulf shore. Lower level wind flow remains favorable for a phasing of these two systems in coming hours.
Model forecasts continue to print historic totals for this event, with the above high resolution NAM model printing above 30 inches of snow for many areas in the New England area. Analysis of other models reveals hi-res NAM and ECMWF are aligned in the same forecast. GFS is more bearish than the other two, but will prefer the ECMWF/Hi-res NAM as the European is the more reliable model of the three.

Special morning analysis comes tomorrow.

Andrew