The Week Ahead

105 Comments

10:19PM

Powerful winds have been blowing across southeastern New England during Sunday night behind the departing beast of a storm that exploded just offshore, close enough for light to locally moderate snow and just too far offshore to really dump on the region. There have been some lingering bands of snow near the coast of Cape Ann and Cape Cod MA during the evening hours but these will be moving out overnight. The clouds will depart too, and when the sun rises on Presidents Day Monday, the wind will still be with us, maybe not with the ferocity of the night preceding it, but still strong and gusty. This will create the continuation of blowing and some drifting of the snow that fell on Sunday. It will also be pretty chilly for mid February, with a mid winter feel to the air including a low wind chill. Winds finally slacken at night as a narrow ridge of high pressure moves overhead, but this gets out of the way for the passage of low pressure on Tuesday. This low will be minor in nature, and occurring with milder conditions will result in more rain than mix/snow, though some frozen precipitation may start it and end it, especially over interior areas. As we get to mid week, upper level low pressure will hang around and bring colder air back in, especially by Thursday. Mostly dry weather will also dominate for Wednesday and Thursday. By the time we reach the end of the week, there are signs of a prolonged precipitation event from late Friday into the weekend, the details of which won’t be known for a few days.

I’d also like to take a moment to tell you about a new Facebook page called New England Regional Weather Service. It is run by a staff of 6 from Lyndon State College in Vermont, including one of the regular blog participants here, Scott. If you are on Facebook, please check it out!

Forecast for southern NH, eastern MA, and RI…

OVERNIGHT: Clearing. Lows ranging from around 10 suburbs to 20 on outer Cape Cod. Wind NW 15-30 MPH with gusts above 40 MPH. Wind chill often around or below zero. Blowing and drifting snow.

MONDAY – PRESIDENTS DAY: Sunny. Highs 30-35. Wind NW 15-30 MPH and gusty. Additional blowing snow.

MONDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 15-20. Wind W 5-15 MPH.

TUESDAY: Clouding up in the morning. Chance of light snow/mix mainly well north and west of Boston midday. Chance of rain elsewhere mostly the mid to late afternoon hours. Highs reaching around 40. Wind S increasing to 15-25 MPH.

WEDNESDAY: Partly cloudy. Low 20. High 37.

THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Low 15. High 33.

FRIDAY: Increasing clouds. Chance of snow at night. Low 16. High 34.

SATURDAY: Cloudy. Chance of snow/mix/rain. Low 24. High 38.

SUNDAY: Mostly cloudy. Chance of mix/snow early. Low 32. High 40.

105 thoughts on “The Week Ahead”

  1. Thanks TK!! Cold up here tonight. Hoping for a nice dumping midweek.

    Btw if noone saw yes I confirmed with resort here in Smugglers Notch that they have had 170 inches so far. I am surprised but they say they are in a perfect position for upslope snows.

  8. The coming weekend is far away for any meteorological certainty, but in the meantime I think we will see models, maps and forecasts with every conceivable type of precipitation. Actually OTS works for me about now.

  9. Just went outside thinking I would take my daily walk and as you can see I came back in. It’s ridiculously cold. Wait til midday for the walk.

    1. Totally, I’m looking out there and I’m just like no way, I don’t mind cold but this kind of cold is useless

    2. It should be interesting to see the afternoon recovery in temps ……… with the strong February sun vs. both the very cold airmass (-15F on top of Mt. Washington) and some snow on the ground.

  10. Best wishes to Scott and the rest with New England Regional Weather Service !! Will make sure to be checking it out !

  12. I hear ya retrac! To think 3 or so days ago I took a walk at work with no jacket. 🙂 So when are we out of this Wednesday and Saturday snow threat pattern??? Seems to be how it works…don’t mind if we got something eventually but a threat-free week would be nice.

    1. We will break the weekend snow pattern this coming weekend IMO. Euro has been pretty consistent showing a flat and fast flow underneath us. (160 knot W/E jet right off Mid-Atlantic)

  14. Its hard to believe that the next system late tomorrow and tomorrow night will be mainly rain with how chilly it has been.
    Late week into the weekend doesn’t look like a big system at this point.

  15. That powerhouse storm and the full latitude trof punched the cold / dry air all the way into the far northern Carribean. Havana, Cuba is currently 46F, which must feel like the arctic down there.

  16. Good morning. The daffodils in the south side of our house are up about 2 inches. Spring is here ………..hmmmmmm so what’s that white stuff?

    2. It is really bitter with the wind. I wish it was Spring! That is my favorite season along with Fall. Only 3 weeks from yesterday until we change the clocks! I can’t wait.

      1. I love fall the best myself (well until leaf cleanup). Spring is next though I think…love the first warm weekend when you can smell everything.

        1. Agreed. Leaf cleanup stinks. The first warm spring weekend is nice. I can’t wait and my heating bill can’t wait either!

          1. Man I hear that. Found an old oil bill from 2001 when we moved into our old house and it was .89 a gallon.

            1. Those were the days. I have natural gas and am on the budget plan, but my usage is way up this year. I think my wife has been turning it up while I am work :).

              1. It’s the lack of body hair…HAHA. Same reason at night my wife is under 10 blankets and I am sweating under one. 🙂

              2. BTW, I wish I had natural gas…would love to get a whole house generator and have it piped into the gas line. Would be nice not having to worry about keep an oil or propane tank filled.

  17. Brutal here this morning. No skiing again but the 3 year is signed for ski school tomorrow. Much warmer tomorrow and snow.

  18. My favorite seasons are summer, fall, winter and spring in order. Before kids I loved winter first but since kids no question summer is best.

    1. Funny I agree with you on that. Kids change some thing. For example, when they were young I hated moving the clocks forward…trying to get your kids to sleep with the sun out and someone mowing their lawn at 8pm isn’t easy. Now that they are old I don’t mind it as much. Same with the seasons.

        1. I know what you mean. That was tough in the toddler years. Now I am trying to get my 11 year old to bed by 10. It won’t be long and we will be going to bed before her.

  19. My favorite season is winter. I love the snow. Then its fall with the fall foliage and cool crisp autumn days. Then its spring when things come back to life. Summer is my least favorite since I am not a fan of 3 H weather. For the summer I would love 50s at night and upper 70s low 80s for highs with comfortable levels of humidty.

    1. I am with you on summer JJ. I would like the same spring days we have in the summer. I hate the heat and humidity and also hate being cold, that is why I like fall and spring. I do like the snow though.

  20. Hadi, I’m really surprised to hear winter is your second to least favorite!
    JJ, I’m with you – winter all the way. Nothing beats tracking and living winter storms. Having kids hasn’t really changed that for me. My son loves to go out and shovel with me every time it snows and he is really into skiing, skating, and sledding/snow tubing. My daughter on the other hand…

  21. 0z GFS delivers a nice 6″ snow event to much of SNE this weekend but it is an outlier and given the inferiority that this model continues to display day in and day out, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Right now, the weekend looks more like a general light overrunning event with light snow or mixed precip and a weaker low pressure (than the GFS depicts) passing to our south. This writeup from the NWS this morning is not good news if you like snow:

    NORTHERN HEMISPHERIC TELECONNECTIONS DERIVED BY CPC HAVE BEEN
    CONSISTENT THE LAST FEW DAYS WITH A STRONGLY NEGATIVE NAO AND AO
    INTO THE LATER HALF OF FEBRUARY. PERHAPS THIS IS CONSEQUENTIAL OF
    THE REX BLOCK PATTERN DEVELOPING OVER WESTERN EUROPE INTO THE LATE
    FORECAST PERIOD PER 17.12Z ECMWF. BUT THE PATTERN OVER THE EASTERN
    CONUS IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE TO THE OUTCOMES OF A NEGATIVE NAO.
    RATHER THAN STRONGER TROUGHING ACROSS THE EASTERN CONUS…WITH A
    STORMIER PATTERN AND COLD ARCTIC AIR SPILLING SOUTH…MUCH OF THE
    LATER HALF OF THE LONG-TERM FORECAST IS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF A
    RIDGING PATTERN AND SUBSEQUENTLY WARMER THAN NORMAL CONDITIONS.

    Go figure. We finally get the strong negative NAO and AO, but have nothing to show for it!

    1. It was fun when I lived at home…then when it’s your job to clean it…and you have work to get to…and kids to get to school…and property you don’t want damaged…yeah it can change your opinion. 🙂

  23. Hi, all. Re the morning walk, Longshot: I have 2 dogs (6lbs and 16lbs) and they almost went airborne this morning (not easy to fly and poop at the same time. Lol).
    Did I miss the time and location of the get together? If so, can someone please repost it?

  24. The 0 degree 850 line comes all the way down the California coast this week with this next system. Wonder if we will see snow all the way to the coast.

    1. Notice how it pops a secondary coastal low for Wednesday as well. Too far north to do anything for us but it does give Maine a significant snowfall.

  26. Well not that we have survived the most “extreme” 1-7″ snowstorm in the history of mankind, and lets face it away from areas that are within 3 miles of the coast it was more like a 1-4″ storm, we can turn our attention the next winter weather event that might traverse the area in the near future. Some sort of mid-weekend extended duration event looks possible. 12z GFS is advertising a general 5-10″ type event in SNE. Probably not going to get what the GFS is advertising, but something to keep an eye on.

    I have to say I was laughing pretty hard at some of the forecasts Thursday-Sunday. I heard the term blizzard, comparisons to the previous weekend and forecasts of 10-14.” It was not a fun event to forecast, but it was not that hard. A 1-4″ forecast with locally higher amounts of up to 6″along the immediate coast, would have served the public just fine. You had enough model agreement to come up with that forecast. The foreign models plus the proprietary models were all pretty close.

    I saw TK’s comment about the NWS measurement at Taunton from yesterday morning and I have to admit, I had the exact same reaction when I saw it.

    PS-I think the NWS is a little too bullish on this idea of an east coast ridge, above normal temp pattern.

  27. Absolutely retrac. I was driving 495 and RT 2 yesterday and it was not an enjoyable drive at all with the wind swaying the car from side to side and sometimes it felt like a push instead of a sway!

  29. I love this kind of weather and will miss it come springtime. I realize now that mornings in the teens will be history very soon, so I took advantage, got up very early to run (followed by a long walk to work). My seasonal preferences: Winter, Fall, Summer, Spring.

    I actually think the forecasts this past weekend were not especially out of line. Given that there was little or no model agreement, and there was a real threat to the region had the low traversed the benchmark, I do think it was prudent to warn people ahead of time. Better safe than sorry. And, quite frankly, yesterday morning along the coast was very treacherous driving. Much worse than a run-of-the-mill snowstorm. Even yesterday afternoon, driving up from RI, it was not an easy drive: Combination of a lot of blowing snow and ferocious wind.

    Regarding the medium- and long-range forecast, it looks like we’ll finally have our below normal temperature month (February) as we’ll generally be at or around normal the rest of the month (exception being tomorrow). Would not be surprised to see a snowy and rainy (active) pattern in March. We’ve overdue for a March filled with surprises. I’m not buying the persistent ridging NWS (and others) wants to have us believe will happen.

  31. My favorite seasons 1)Fall 2)Spring (April and beyond) 3)Winter 4) Summer (can’t stand the hazy hot and humid days)

  32. Mark me personally winter wins, but as a parent of two boys winter can be brutal 🙂 being outside is wonderful in summer

  33. So very refreshing – the positive and pleasant comments following Barry Burbank’s blog post yesterday evening!

  34. Regarding this weekend’s threat, the UKMET has joined the GFS with the more amplified solution and developing coastal low tracking just south of SNE. Also, the Canadian at hour 120 has a big slug of precip riding up the Appalachians towards us. Perhaps this could get interesting after all. It’s all fantasy land though until the Euro jumps on board.

  35. re: Canadian

    http://meteocentre.com/models/explorateur.php?lang=en&map=na&run=12&mod=gemglb&stn=PNMPR&comp=1&run2=12&mod2=gemglb&stn2=PNMPR&hh2=156&fixhh=1&hh=144

    http://meteocentre.com/models/explorateur.php?lang=en&map=na&run=12&mod=gemglb&stn=PNMPR&comp=1&run2=12&mod2=gemglb&stn2=PNMPR&hh2=144&fixhh=1&hh=156

    UKMET

    http://meteocentre.com/models/explorateur.php?lang=en&map=na&run=12&mod=ukmet&stn=PNM&comp=1&run2=12&mod2=ukmet&stn2=PNM&hh2=120&fixhh=1&hh=144

    GFS

    http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/Image.php?model=gfs&area=namer&param=850_temp_mslp_precip&cycle=12&image=gfs%2F12%2Fgfs_namer_144_850_temp_mslp_precip.gif

    Take your pick. Nice to see some agreement for a change. 😀

  36. Here is the Euro for Sunday:

    http://raleighwx.americanwx.com/models/euro/12zeuro850mbTSLPUS144.gif

    Here is the 500 mb heights with mslp:

    http://raleighwx.americanwx.com/models/euro/12zeurotropical500mbSLP144.gif

    Look at the next panel 24 hours later!

    http://raleighwx.americanwx.com/models/euro/12zeurotropical500mbSLP168.gif

    The Euro will take this thing harmlessly OTS.

    SO, I wonder what will happen??? I really don’t think we even see a flake
    from this system. 😀

    he he he

    😀

    1. This time around, I’ll take an OTS. Something tells me this will be another loooooooong week of slow trends north and Euro VS. GFS debates…HA.

  38. OS, this run of the Euro is defintely an improvement over previous runs. More amplified and further north. Not close enough yet for a significant impact, but it’s trending closer.

    Pretty crazy at the track it takes after it passes over the open waters….it has no where to go but towards Bermuda with that huge block in place.

    1. As unscientific as it sounds I feel in that last run it was almost as if the Bermuda high is sort of squeezing the low towards the mainland coast. As you said, not close enough for a hit but a change in track for sure.

  40. From HM….

    “The pattern for the next two weeks will be very stormy. In addition, the NAO is finally going negative and the PNA is going positive. I find it interesting that the NAO values are getting close to the values we saw around the time of Sandy. If that is correct, we need to watch the East coast for possible big storm.

    The GFS suggests that a wave of low pressure forms this weekend and hits the Northeast with snow. With the blocking in place, we need to watch that storm for heavy snow in the Northeast this week if indeed it occurs.”

    At least he qualified the last statement by “if indeed it occurs”. LOL.

      1. I’ve seen that guy dust off his big daddy hat to just put it back away, entertains for sure but disappointments galore

  41. Per Brett Anderson, the highest wind gust reported from this weekend’s storm in the Maritimes was 112 mph at Wreckhouse, Newfoundland. Interestingly, the highest snow total reported on his list was only 11″ in Moncton, New Brunswick. The wind was definitely the big story with that storm, not so much the precip.

  42. I actually would go with a non euro set up on this one. Just look at the -NAO it’s spitting out. Blocking is there and it will readjust. Euro tends to lose systems in the mid range.

  44. Mark, thanks for posting Brett Anderson’s comments. Needless to say, Wreckhouse, NF, is probably a wreck. I hope nobody lost their life in the storm. 112 mph gusts, my goodness. I wonder what the sustained wind speed was? Cat 1 perhaps?

    You can see what the wind did on this photo below:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2008/05/22/wreckhouse-trucks.html

    Notice, no snow cover at all. The storm produced mostly rain across New Foundland (snow showers in Labrador).

  47. One thing to keep in mind is the weekly pattern phenomenon. In this case, we’ve now been hit twice on weekends (well hit once and sideswiped once) by major storms developing off the coast. It may be that we’re in a pattern in which coastal lows form on a weekly basis for a time. They may not be exact replica’s of one another, and they probably follow different tracks. Yet, we know that weather does often follow definite patterns or cycles. And these patterns or cycles can last 4-6 weeks. This is why confidence level of a storm forming off the coast should be fairly high. Whether it hits us or not is the next question, and what kind of air will it encounter if it hits us (Arctic, marginally cold, mild).

    1. That bad winter a few years ago…weren’t we in a Sunday and Tueday patter for a long time? I might be remembering it wrong but I thought it was those two days.

      1. Yes, absolutely. Can’t remember the exact days of the week, but we were definitely locked into a pattern for about 6 weeks as I recall.

        1. Happened last winter too in a subtle way. Incredibly warm/dry winter. Yet almost every Sunday was cold. 🙂

  48. Channel cracks me up. This morning the weekend storm was passing south of us…minor snow…now this afternoon its “Cloudy skies with snow developing by afternoon & lasting through the night. Looks like a plowable snowstorm. Highs in the low 30s.” Maybe they’ll put a map out today too! 🙂

      1. Yeah that what was I was getting at. I am far from an expert…but given that it’s 5+ days out and once again we have two main models showing different things…and I assume they are going with the GFS? Why???

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