Lets Play: Will it Rain, Snow, or Sleet?

Coming up next Wednesday, we’ve got quite a monster of a storm coming up to get us. This looks to be a Nor’ Easter on land. Unlike most Nor’ Easters, this one will be inland (maybe a  little too far) to actually get some excellent snows for CNY.

Lets start off with the uncertainties. Forecasting almost a week in advance, a lot can go wrong. The good news is the ensembles have an excellent agreement on this storm, the only difference being arrival time, and length. Also, this storm can track all of 200 miles either direction. If it goes west, flooding problems; east, wonderful accumulations of snow.

Lake Effect Changes at it’s Finest

You guys may have read my post earlier this morning about how great Bufkit looked for oncoming lake effect. Well, truth be told, that post was written 12 hours before, and was just sitting in the printing press ready to be released. Why didn’t I release it? Well, I didn’t want to have two posts in one day!

Many changes have occurred since I analyzed the data yesterday. Low level shear looks to be a terror, along with low humidity levels, it’s actually going to be a wee bit difficult to get lake effect going.

What a Lake Effectful Week!

Welcome to the second full week of January! Remember that January thaw everybody talks about? Well, not right now. We’re going to be experiencing the coldest temperatures this season, we’re talking minus double-digits! And of course when we get air that cold going over the lakes, someone’s going to get hammered with lake effect.

I’m going to break down the formula for lake effect little by little. There won’t be any particular order to it, just as it comes across for me to look at.

Get Ready To Freeze

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve been beta testing Windows 7, and am now using the blog writing interface within to write this. I like it!

If you’ve been paying attention to the GFS, you’ll notice that we have two Alberta clippers coming in for the end of this week. These will bring with them a cold front, and it means business.

The first storm system will be rolling through here mid-day Thursday. This system doesn’t look to be coming in with that much of a vengence, and it’ll be further weakened by a Nor’ Easter type system that’ll be riding up the coast. Our storm will transfer it’s energy over, leaving a dry slot over someone. Don’t expect much more than 1-4” inches out of this storm.

After that, on Thursday/Friday we’ll be having our second storm come in. Right now with it being so far away, we can’t really through out any real numbers, although I’m going to go out on a limb with 3-6” areawide.

Then our attention turns to lake effect. It’s way too early to be saying any numbers, or location. However, this looks to be some good snows for someone. If you want an interesting read about the situation, read the NWS Buffalo forecast discussion.

~Mike

My Thoughts on Clippers

As many of you know, tomorrow we’re expecting a clipper system here in central New York. Whenever I see one of these events on the horizon, I see “bust” written everywhere. The problem with these things is, you have to take every single thing into hand, or else that word will be your forecast.

First off, clippers are something different. We’ve all dealt with Lake Effect, where Oswego county and the Tug get hit. There’s also the Nor’ Easters, where the Adirondacks are the winners. Take note in what those locations have in common, they’re in the northern tier of CNY.
Clippers are another beast, however. Unlike the normal “the farther north you go, the more snow,” they have more snow the farther south you go. This holds true for almost no matter what. Otsego county will always get more than Boonville in these systems, unless they track through CNY.

There’s also the forecasting challenges within. These clippers are fast movers, and some even have precip. type to take into account. On top of that, they’re fast movers. These systems may produce snowfall rates fast enough to warrant the high totals, but it just doesn’t last.
To add to all that mess to take care of, there’s the model bias. Currently, the NAM has been waiting until the middle of the storm to bring things north, to have that verify. So, right now when I see one of these systems, I’m thinking that it’s going to go further north than the NAM has pegged. The GFS seems to handle these events well, but it’s hard to use its resolution to make a snowfall forecast.

Now, I haven’t really been looking at too much weather data this past week, but I’ll be sure to get back into the swing of things after the holidays.

Will The Snow Fall?

It seems as though the date of the first sighting of snow is something that is completely unpredictable. Every year we get a different date, and different types of snow.

Most years the date of the first snow is on or around the 15th. For our first snow we basically get some snow falling, and melting on contact. Sometimes we’ll get a coating, but it melts.

Right now it’s 42, down from 52 just 3 hours ago. It is reportedly snowing in Buffalo at 36. Do I think it’ll snow tonight/tomorrow morning? Yes, I do.

Now I’d like to open up a discussion on how hard y’all think this winter will be. According to both Farmers Almanacs it’s going to be a hard one. And in case you didn’t notice, this years crops were huge. From most people I’ve talked to, that’s a sure sign of a hard winter.

Now, a hard winter would be a turn-around of the trend. For that last who-knows-howmany years we’ve been getting lighter and lighter winters, with them actually starting later and later. And now the kids might have to deal with snow on Halloween.

Also available on Mike’s WunderBlog, at WunderGround.Com