Looking Ahead to Friday

Wednesday, Jan 17, 10AM

It’s been a good week if you like snow and winter weather. Obviously, I love falling snow, but I also enjoy when the snow sticks around for awhile. A fresh arctic air mass after a snow is what I would order every time because as far as I am concerned, if it’s going to be winter, it might as well winter.

Anyway, not much to say about the system on Friday because there isn’t a consensus on how it plays out. Right now it looks like snow begins around sunrise on Friday and continues into the afternoon with a general 1-3″ across the region, with the lesser amounts to the south and higher amounts north. Much of the forecast will focus on whether the system tracks to our south, right over us, or to the north. To maximize our snow potential, we need it to track to the south and right now most models have it too far north to bring much snow, so it’s too soon to say how it plays out.

I’ll keep an eye on it and update from to time.

Possibly a Busy Week of Winter

An arctic front will cross the area by afternoon today bringing high wind, a possible lunch time snow shower, and much colder temperatures. Blustery conditions continue through the rest of the holiday weekend with a passing flurry from time to time leading into Monday night and early Tuesday’s possible first snow event of the season. Well, actually, it would be the first in two seasons so fingers crossed that it continues to head in the right direction.

The Monday night system looked much better on the gfs model a few days ago and then completely fizzled out, but a heartbeat has returned and now other models are coming around to the same idea. If they are correct in their output, then light snow would develop in central MD after midnight Monday night and continue into the morning. Presently, it does not look like a major event but with cold temperatures in place, Tuesday morning’s commute would be impacted. Again, this is prefaced on if the gfs and nam models are correct. Hopefully the European model comes around today. I’ll update later today or early Monday morning.

After Tuesday, cold, dry conditions continue through the week until a possible storm system approaches the area Friday. A lot of uncertainty with that system, so more on that later. For now, I’m just happy that there is a chance of a region-wide accumulating (albeit minor) snow event.

The El Nino is Flexing

Monday, Jan 8, 12PM

Any drought conditions that are leftover from the region-wide dry fall are certainly going to be erased over the next week thanks to the sub tropical jet. Two major storms will impact the area over the next week beginning tomorrow, and unfortunately they are both going to be rain.

For tomorrow, rain will develop around sunrise and become heavy in the afternoon and evening. To make a crummy day even worse, the rain will accompanied by gusty winds. Tomorrow evening looks to be the worst for both the heaviest rain and highest wind gusts with 2-3″ of rain expected by Wednesday morning and wind gusts expected to be in the 40 to as much as 50 mph range tomorrow afternoon and evening. Flood conditions and power outages are likely and the NWS has issued flood watches and high wind advisories for the entire area. Obviously, be careful when traveling tomorrow through early Wednesday.

After tomorrow’s deluge, a second storm is expected to develop late this week and take a similar track. If so, we can expect more of the same late Friday and early Saturday. Beyond that, we might finally get into a better winter pattern for the end of January and February, but it’s getting tough to stay hopeful.

We need some snow.