Thursday, January 28th, 1:30 PM
There still isn’t any reason to parse the details, so here’s the summary as of this afternoon. Sunday morning snow will arrive across the area from west to east. Best guess is anywhere from 9AM to noon. Like the December storm, this first batch of precipitation will be from warm air arriving aloft ahead of the center of circulation. By Sunday evening, just guessing, but anywhere from 3 – 6″ of accumulation, and then we should go into a lull and some areas might even change over to light rain or drizzle as the dry slot of the storm crosses the area. This part of the system right now has the highest confidence of occurring. The storm is in the western US and traversing the country. All models agree on some kind of snow thump on Sunday.
Now for the less confident part. As the low approaches from the west, it will transfer energy to a developing system along the Atlantic seaboard. All major models now give us more snow from that developing low pressure. However, what is still uncertain is where that low develops, how fast it develops, and whether or not it stalls. Right now, most models seem to be converging on the idea of another 2 – 6″ beginning early Monday morning and dragging out into Monday night. It could be less if the storm develops too far east (or north, or south…), and it could be more if it decides to visit the boardwalk of Ocean City. Most forecasts are putting more stock in the European model which has the transfer and redevelopment just off the coast which would be a huge win for central MD. I don’t have to put my neck out so I can continue to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
For now, I am going to focus on what looks like a likely event on Sunday that will have periods of moderate to heavy snow at times ranging from 3 – 6″. Obviously, this is a first guess and I’ll update as we get closer. But, assuming the Euro is the most right solution, then Monday morning a second round of moderate to very heavy snow will be possible and last through the day. You can look at a pretty snow map and see that the Euro HIRES suggests totals from both parts of the storm of about 10″ around DC, and upwards from there to about 18″ in northeast MD around Bel Air (northeasterly areas generally do better in this type of system, called a Miller B, as they tend to remain in the secondary development the longest). As I’ve said before, the snow maps are fun to look at, but they should be used as a tool and not verbatim. Nevertheless, IF the Euro is on to a win, then there will likely be a lot of snow around here by Monday night.
Again, this is all preliminary and I’ll update again tomorrow.
The Weather Mill 