Thursday Forecast

31 Comments

7:24AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 20-24)
Two cold days in a row have been about our maximum time for a cold shot this winter, and once again that will be the case thanks to Canadian high pressure and a piece of modified arctic air mass today and Friday, until that high pressure area situates itself to the southwest and south of New England and the return flow around it brings milder air back into the region during the course of the weekend. By Monday, low pressure approaching from the southwest will spread clouds into the region.
TODAY: Sunny. Highs 28-35. Wind N up to 10 MPH.
TONIGHT: Clear. Lows 10-17. Wind N under 10 MPH.
FRIDAY: Sunny. Highs 32-39. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 22-29. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY: Partly cloudy. Highs 40-47. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 25-32. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 45-52. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 30-37. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
MONDAY: Increasing clouds. Chance of rain at night. Highs 43-50. Wind S up to 10 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 25-29)
Two storm systems impact the region during this period, the first as a mainly rain event for a portion of February 25 before drier weather returns and colder air arrives between it and the arrival of the next system, which may contain any type of precipitation but a stronger chance of frozen varieties as it impacts the region from later February 26 through February 27, with dry and seasonably cold weather following it to end the month.

DAYS 11-15 (MARCH 1-5)
Somewhat active and colder pattern to start the month of March. The door will be open for the possibility of winter weather events.

31 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

  2. Thanks TK !

    Euro and GFS look really cold about days 9-10 today.

    Sports: the win pace the Bruins and Lightning have going is incredible. Might need 120 points to win the division.

  4. Here is a re-post from earlier this morning. Just a crazy little tid bit from an inquiring mind…..

    Was pondering yesterday as to whether or not there were any ski areas
    in Africa. Yes, I am out there for sure. 🙂

    Well, funny thing, there are.

    This is a list of ski areas and resorts in Africa.

    Despite the general perception that Africa is too warm for snow, there are several ski areas that exist across the continent.

    Algeria
    Chréa
    Tikjda

    Lesotho
    Afriski

    Morocco
    Ifrane
    Mischliffen
    Oukaimeden

    South Africa
    Tiffindell

    Here is a little video of the largest resort, Oukaimeden, in the Atlas mountains of Morocco.

    https://youtu.be/5nTVpvrmk24

    Elevation info
    2610 m – 3268 m (Difference 658 m)
    base: 8,563 feet
    summit: 10,723 feet
    Vertical drop: 2,159 feet

    South Africa’s ski resort, Tiffindell Ski Resort

    Vertical 180 m (590 ft)
    Top elevation 2,900 m (9,500 ft) [1]
    Base elevation 2,720 m (8,924 ft) [1]

    1. Thanks and very interesting. I did know of South Africa. Mac and family lived there in the late 50s and early 60s

      1. I figured Morocco might have one since I am familiar with
        the Atlas mountains which rise to some 13,000 feet or so, however, no clue on the others.

  8. Thanks TK.

    Closing the loop on a discussion point from the other day – if you want snow, head south. Way south. A major winter storm will be impacting much of eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia this evening and tonight. Hi res guidance indicates potential for a solid swath of 6″+ over NC with some localized double digit totals possible. Some areas down there will easily exceed Boston’s January-February combined total after this event, and will dwarf the full season totals for a large section of the mid-Atlantic.

  9. The upper air pattern on the Euro days 6-7 is definitely intriguing. Hard to say how that will play out though. I think we can lock in a rain event for Tuesday, which looks fairly minor. Question is what, if anything, will pop out behind it as that trough shifts further east. There’s at least plausible scenario, though far from certain, where you can get snow into SNE from that setup.

    1. Thank you. You posted that just as I was about to post that it was looking
      less and less likely that we would get snow on the 27th. I guess the jury is still out. 🙂

  10. Hope no one was actually buying the sustained cooldown… (the tweet is in reference to an ongoing flip to warmer in the long range on the GEFS, among other guidance).

    Eric Fisher @ericfisher

    Should we start the latest iteration of GEFS long range cold failure now, or wait a few more days for the gifs to get better?

  12. Since there isn’t much going on, I’ll post the rest of the exchange between myself & JMA back on January 9 / 10 of 2015 when talking about the upcoming pattern change that lead to the stretch of weather we’ll never forget…

    The following are my original post from January 9 and then the back and forth that followed the next day. Just in time for “Throwback Thursday”. 😛

    ………………………………………………………….
    Woods Hill Weather says:
    January 9, 2015 at 4:37 PM

    Ok! Forecast worked out well today, timing, snow amounts, and the clearing, which for some reason the NWS did not go for. They kept it mostly cloudy into tonight. I’ve never been too sure where they come up with their sky condition forecasts because they are not good at all the majority of the time.

    Cold night! Cold weekend but not as cold as the first Arctic shot. This is not a surprise as the second shot was known to be less potent. But we will still feel the chill through the weekend. Cold Pats game! But we also know it could be much worse.

    I think next week will be “milder” but not overly warm. Current feeling is that we’ll have to watch for lots of cloudiness but not so much storminess. That said, there will be a shot at something late Monday, but it looks minor and biased toward the South Coast. But 3 days off so will monitor.

    I also don’t see anything after that materializing into a snowstorm threat for SNE through the rest of next week and carrying forward into the week after that. Pattern change around January 24/25, then we start talking about snow threats for 6 weeks.

    Woods Hill Weather says:
    January 10, 2015 at 10:56 AM

    JMA if you are still out here: What is your take at this point on the pattern as we head into the end of January / February? Since November, I have felt that if we had a shot at a snowy period (that is a series of legitimate snowfalls in at least parts of southern New England) it would come in February, with borderline weeks final week of January and first week of March. I have been known to be off on timing, even when I get the general transition idea right. GFS ensemble mean hints at positive height anomalies more into western Canada and eastern Alaska around January 25. There is also positive anomaly in the North Atlantic. Maybe I’d like to see that tucked a little closer to Greenland. The ridge is not in the southwestern Atlantic like it was in the December pattern but down closer to Mexico and I would think that may prevent that pattern where the trough buries itself in the Southwest underneath a “tilt-over” ridge. The pattern depicted there looks a little more stable, following a period of milder Pacific flow that follows our current cold. That pattern showing up late January if it should hold as the general pattern for a few weeks would then breed our snow chances for the Winter basically, not necessarily all materializing, but making the pattern a little more active, in terms of snowstorm threats. Do you agree with this?

    JMA says:
    January 10, 2015 at 3:31 PM

    TK- I saw your question above and my thoughts are in line with yours. I think I would slow down a transition to that pattern. I think the warmer pacific flow shows up around the 18-20th time frame and then heights will rise out west sometime around the 28th-30th, signaling the start of a more active, but not necessarily cold pattern. My concerns here are if the the ridge does not slide east towards Greenland and the ridge down south ends up east of Mexico we end up with a warm southern stream conduit for storms originating in the SW and TV lows to come up over us or just to our west and that means mix or cold rain events. It will be close! I am probably 4-7 days slower on pattern evolution then most, but I will stay with everything being a bit slower to transition as that has been a consistent trend this winter. I am banking on a 15 day pattern of more significant precip events centered about the 1st half of February being just cold enough to deliver most of our snowfall for the winter. So TK I am in general agreement with you, I am just a little concerned our active pattern ends a bit, but a crucial bit,too warm.

    Woods Hill Weather says:
    January 10, 2015 at 4:20 PM

    Thank you. I’ll certainly not scoff at your delay in the pattern change. It was right-on last time and again my bias as a forecaster has generally been to flip patterns a bit too fast. Unusual considering I’m a very patient person. Still working on that often-made error. .. At least we’re both centered generally around the same time for the majority of the snow.

    JMA says:
    January 10, 2015 at 4:39 PM

    I don’t think that is your bias. It is a common bias. We all tend to jump on modeled trends which are typically too fast. Same way we in reverse we buy into models tendency to hold on to precip from low pressure systems too long.

    I can see this scenario giving us 4 events in a a 15-16 day period. A Heavy event, 3 light to moderate events and before you know it if you have mostly snow you have picked up 24-30″ plus of anow.
    You have any concern similar to mine about active but just a bit too warm for big snow totals?

    Woods Hill Weather says:
    January 10, 2015 at 4:44 PM

    Yes I do share that concern. Seen that in several Winters when I was working in the private sector.

    1. very interesting thank you and what happened??? wow, wow and double wow, but you guys were clued in, but not tovthe magnitude.

    2. Awesome. I often look back in the blog. It never fails to give me chills. We have some amazing knowledge here

    1. Just ahhhhhhh. I’m going to look at it for a while and pretend I’m there. Enjoy and thanks for sending .

  16. Thanks for the flashback. We seemed to have had the right idea, but no one could have predicted the the amount of snow SNE received from 1/24-2/15. There was a widespread rain event around the 18th with temps in the 50s and then we got a mixed storm with about .75 of liquid that only gave about 5″ of snow on the 24th and I was thinking, ok we are going to be in this stormy but borderline pattern and THEN…..the ratios, liquid to snow for the subsequent events were mind blowing and impossible to predict. The 1/27 storm was around 23:1 in Boston and the 65″ in February was on about 3.4″ of liquid.

    After 2/15 we still got some snow but we maxed out at about 3″ in anyone event but is was incredible 22 days.

    I still think those ratios haunt some forecasters good and bad. Aggressive ones recall them with frequent glee and look for ways for 20:1 to happen as common occurrence, while conservative ones search to look for what I am missing that could give us something anamolous in my snowfall accumulations.

    1. Even now I have people say “there must have been some serious flooding when all that snow melted” …. Nope. There was no water in it, and most of it sublimated in that cold/dry March we had! While that saved us from flooding, it actually made the building drought problem worse.

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