Final Forecast: 2/5-2/6 Winter Storm

You can click the map to make it bigger.

Here's my final call for the storm. Snow starts Friday early afternoon in DC and gradually spreads north and east.

Wind will crank up on the coast and blizzard conditions are likely in coastal Delaware and probably coastal NJ as well.

In terms of confidence...it's difficult to quantify. Never have been a fan of attaching probabilities to things verifying, so let me explain this to you as best I can.

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most difficult, here's how I'd rank the challenge presented by this forecast for a few locations.

Richmond: 6/10
Washington DC: 3/10
Baltimore: 3/10
Delaware south: 5/10
Delaware north: 6/10
Philly: 7/10
South Jersey: 6/10
Trenton: 10/10
NYC: 10/10

Ironically, it's the areas forecasted to get hit the hardest (DC/Baltimore into NoVA) that are the easiest to forecast. This shouldn't be much of a surprise. In big events, this often happens.

The problem is multi-fold. This storm is running into a wall. This will limit how far north the snow shield can get. One model, which has been fairly reliable this season, the NAM, suddenly shifted its forecast this evening, giving NO snow to NYC and most of North Jersey and considerably cutting down on totals in South Jersey (10-12ish), Philly and parts of Delaware. Still hammered DC/Baltimore. This model was missing a critical upper air observation from New Orleans however, so I cannot put much stock into it yet. But there is definitely risk that there are underachieving totals.

My "line of demarcation" extends from Atlantic City-Wilmington, DE-York, PA.

South of this line...high confidence forecast, with the exception of the southern fringe. North of this line, there is a HIGH risk that snow totals will either be drastically less...or around what I am forecasting. In other words, it's an "all or nothing" storm (except north of I-78 in NJ...where amounts of 3-6" are likely the best you'll do in any scenario).

Unfortunately I won't have much time to comment tomorrow on this, but after the morning runs (around 11 AM), I should be able to tell you if that high risk area will be impacted or not. Otherwise, this should be it. Big winners will be DC area/Baltimore and portions of South NJ/Delmarva. I say max totals of 20-25" possible, but in reality, I wouldn't be shocked to see absolute maximums pushing 30" in these areas, especially in DE/MD/VA. Stay safe and enjoy!!

PS: Next week's storm may finally be the one that gets folks in New England some love. Stay tuned.