Mid-Week Storm, Spring Outlook Preview

Well it looks like we're going to get a good storm this week, but the problem is that it's probably going to be a miss for most areas in the Northeast. The best chance for any snow with this storm is going to be from Atlanta north into the mountains of North Carolina, as well as far Eastern North Carolina and Southeast Virginia. There's a secondary chance that snow will be able to extend onto the Jersey and Delaware shores, as well as potentially Eastern Long Island and Cape Cod late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning...later up north. A weak disturbance will provide the interior with some scattered snow/rain showers on Wednesday.

There are a couple things holding this back. The pattern overall is too progressive...it's moving forward too much. You're not able to phase together the disturbances shifting East. The storm from last week is just now starting to exit, which is a bit too late to get the players on the field lined up properly to score a storm further inland. And the large ridge of high pressure in the upper atmosphere out West is centered over Wyoming and Montana. For a good coastal storm, that needs to be centered closer to Boise, ID. It's becoming too late in the game for this to really change.

So my overall feeling for plowable snow is:

North and West of I-95: Limited to No Risk
Jersey/Delaware Shore: Low Risk
Eastern Long Island: Low Risk
Cape Cod: Low to Medium Risk
Southeast VA/Eastern NC: Low to medium risk
Central/Southern NC through ATL: Medium risk

The biggest problem in the Southeast is that it's now March and you have warmer surface temperatures and a stronger sun than you had even 2-3 weeks ago. It can snow and it can accumulate in the South in March, but I'm not sure this is going to be the best setup for it.

I'll post an update on the evening data when it rolls in.

In other news...

Tomorrow, I'll post my Spring Outlook with a brief overview of what I think we can expect for March, April and May. Just a preview, I don't think winter is entirely over yet, but we're certainly running out of time. The big question is whether parts of the East can break the funk of the last couple April/Mays. I'll try and answer that for you tomorrow.