1/3/06: Winter Storm - Northeast U.S.

[HAltschule]

Wow. Models are trending much closer to the coast. My favorite forecaster in BOS (Walt Drag) is talking major ice storm in most spots with inland locations getting 6-12" of snow. Albany, NY cross sections are as follows:

06z GFS MON: 12" of Snow
12z ETA MON: 0" of Snow, some sleet/freezing rain and mostly rain.

T1T3T5 temps on FOUS are all around 00. Some values are below. With +10 mb/s VV, we may be talking about snow as the column is rapidly cooled. Talk about a tricky forecast!!!

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

 

[Robert Dewey]

Definitely is tricky... I thought we would have dynamically cooled last night with a "surprise snowstorm"... Yesterdays 00Z/06Z models had continued with a cooling trend, and VV's were forecast to be around 10 mbars/s for a rather extended period of time (+12 hours). The layer was forecast to warm to only 1C-2C at my location, but the layer was pretty thick (1500m)... Unfortunately, the WAA was much too strong for significant dynamic cooling, with only a few stations briefly reporting snow about 2 hours into the game before quickly changing back to rain.

I haven't reviewed the northeast yet to see what's happening, but it definitely is tricky.