It's Been So Long, I Forgot My Password...

But now that I'm in to my own blog, let's talk.

All the signs and signals are there for a major winter storm threat from Thursday of this week into the weekend.  We have unusual model agreement (this far out) but the usual questions are still there.

Years of DC weather should have inoculated you against too much excitement when we're still more than 72 hours from the start of any precipitation but since it really doesn't work that way for me either, let's see what we've got.

First and foremost, we've got El Niño.  Yes we do.  On Christmas Day, I turned on the air conditioner and the same ocean anomaly that was responsible for that is also responsible for sending storms across the US with more moisture and energy than "normal".  We just haven't been able to get the cold air (when it has been there) timed right.  This looks to be less of a problem (gut feeling tells me "no problem") this time.

We've got a high pressure system moving into the New England states which will keep the cold air going.

And, we've got a storm:




That model output is from 7 PM on Friday by which point, according to the GFS, it has been snowing for the better part of 7 hours in the DC area.  The storm is still transitioning to the coast and taking its sweet time about it giving us a potential prolonged period of heavy snow.



By 7 AM Saturday, the GFS has us at the tail end of the storm's peak.  Heavy snow would have fallen all night - although the storm's proximity to the coast brings mixing with sleet into question.

The Euro (which I usually trust more than the GFS this time of year) will be running a bit later but just for fun, let's look at GFS predicted snow totals from the storm:



That's right, kids.  Those areas of brown/orange near DC and north suggest a potential for storm totals measured in feet around here.

This is typical of El Niño.  When the storms do arrive, they pack a moisture and energy punch.

The other models I have seen are slight variations on this same theme.  The most pessimistic of them (that also happens to be one of the ones that usually suck the most) still has 12-14+ inch totals around the DC-Baltimore area.

Let's buckle in.  There's still WAY too much time for things to change to go clear the stores of bread. The thing that concerns me most is storm track (as usual) and in this setup, the potential is there for what we call "supression".  The whole thing could be shunted southward leaving us out of the heaviest snow.

But.  We can say the potential exists for a major storm starting Friday morning and stretching into Saturday and that the models, at this point, are hinting at a crippling storm for this area.

We'll see what the Euro says.