New Year Starts Mild Then Turns Colder And Potential Snow Storm

December 31 – We close out 2016 with clouds, but a rather quiet and uneventful day along the Mid Atlantic. If you have plans to head out for the New Year celebration, most of our area will have temperatures around 40°F. You know the expression, “Can’t we all just get along”? Well, Monday already shows a split in the computer models as the next storm arrives. It will be another warm one with rain, but the Canadian Model is hanging on to some freezing rain near the PA line, while the GFS Model has the ice farther north. So, forecasts will vary depending on which model or hybrid your weather app or forecast office pays attention to. That brings up the rest of the week and the big split for the potential snow storm next weekend. More on that below:

Tonight- Midnight 2017

Monday Morning: Ice Or Just Rain?

GFS Model- Starts with just rain for us….

Canadian Model –> slider

Ice near PA Line then rain. The agreement on al models is for two days of rain and a warm up Tuesday….

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Next Week:

The pattern will once again turn colder AFTER this storm passes. A clipper shown on the Canadian will help usher in the colder air Thursday… If this verifies, it only looks like flurries or snow showers. Nothing big… yet

Why I show this model…

Within the weather community there is a tendency to overuse the GFS Model because that is the main American model and what the National Weather Service relies on most. The European ECMWF Model has the best ling range track record for accuracy, but showing graphics are limited due to licensing. The Canadian Model has proven to be quite reliable in cold winter patterns, but not all year. I show it often in the winter for contrast and it has shown itself to be better than the GFS, especially in our ice storm a few weeks ago. So I am going to lean on it again.
Below it portrays the next event with consistency of snow for the Mid Atlantic next weekend. I need to point out that the energy is still just passing Hawaii. There is not a lot of weather data in the Pacific to enter into the forecast calculations, so slight adjustments can result a dramatic changes a week away. Let’s say a model is off by 5 mph for the speed of the energy heading our way from this region. Process that out 7 days, and the energy location will be off by 840 miles. That can impact the interaction with other weather features and throw off the track and timing completely. That’s assuming the analysis is spot on to begin with…. The timing of this event has fluctuated between Thursday and Saturday… The GFS Model has next weekend’s storm too far south for us now. The European Model had showed an impacting snow storm yesterday, but it has disappeared on the last run. That appears to be a model glitch. The Canadian has been most consistent, and shows this:

Snow Next Weekend? This is how the Canadian GEM Model shows it —-> slider

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GFS Model Depiction: Too far south

Note: I expect the GFS will flip flop back north over the next few runs

So for now I am not and no one should guarantee what will happen. There are too many variables and we are left only to see what each model run on each model shows. I prefer to track the event prior, and see how it behaves. That may or may not continue to prove the Canadian Model strength in winter. But watching the actual energy in the Pacific will have more data once it reaches the west coast early next week.

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