All the mid-day runs are in and the trend of small positive changes continue. Every model is now depicting at least a 3 – 5″ cold snow event beginning tomorrow evening into Sunday morning. The Canadian RGEM and the US FV3 have the most snow, which is always concerning when the Euro doesn’t agree, but the most recent Euro does now show a solid snow event across the area. Not as much as the other two, but a significant increase from its earlier runs, and a solid 3 – 5″.
As of now, the NWS has not issued any watches or advisories, but I expect that will change in the next few hours. The best news is that we are still over 24 hours from the start, so there is still time for more improvement. For this to become a really good event, we need the coastal low to throw back some Atlantic moisture, and I still think that is unlikely for us in central MD, but the recent model runs suggest it’s something to keep watching.
By the way, there’s been some recent chatter that the US weather models have been compromised by the federal government shutdown, but I have read from meteorologists that work for the NWS, that that is not the case. For whatever reason, the verification scores of the GFS temporarily dropped around the time of the shutdown, but there was no correlation. The American models are being fed the same data as always.
More later.
The Weather Mill 