December 22, 1998
Winter officially arrived last night and appears tp be right on time. Unfortunately,
my server went down last night and I was unable to update.
Right now, a powerful arctic vortex is swinging through
the Northeast U.S. bringing with it a line of heavy rain (which
already has passed through here in Philly) and very strong
winds. There is a wind advisory in effect for
this afternoon. A gusty Northwest wind will follow the passage of this frontal
system as temperatures plummet this afternoon. We reached
a high temperature for the date with 64 degrees around 6:00
this morning. Expect the air temperature to continue to drop
through the 30's by rush hour and into the low 20's for our
overnight low. Things get interesting hereafter. Tommorow should
start off variably cloudy with temperature struggling to
get out of the low 30's. In the afternoon, the region will
see an increase of high, cirrus clouds as a disturbance
approaches from Texas. Note, there is really no strong
storm system moving in, just a weak shortwave travelling across
an old frontal boundary in the south (the one that passed through today)
and convective moisture developing along this front and pressing
East and sligthly Northeast. By late Wednesday night, our
area see some light snow developing. Models vary on QPF or
precipitation amounts, but all show this scenario occurring.
Any precipitation would fall in the form of snow. One model
hints at this area of precipitation being more stretched out
and prolonged into Thursday, while the NGM shows merely a quick shot of
snow tomorrow night. I decided to split all the QPF's from
the various models and am calling for a quarter inch up to
possibly 2 inches depending on how this plays out. Right now, it
looks like no big deal, but if the moisture decides to creep
a little further north, we could get more. If it decides to
stay further to the south, we get less. This is still a
preliminary forecast but the chances look good for at least
a preiod of light snow sometime between Wednesday night and
Thursday mid-morning. Thereafter, things should quiet down in
time for Christmas Day but it will be cold with the high
around freezing. The next system is progged to move through the area
on Saturday night. Models are still all over the place with this one,
but they all agree an a storm developing downstream
of a ridge in the West. The MRF model has the Mid-Atlantic
getting hit with a hefty snow event, the EC hints at a similair
scenario, and the NGP is a bit more progressive and develops
the storm further out to sea. This is a ways off still, so
I am hesitant to get into any particulars. There are some
signs that it may be warm enough for all rain if a storm
were to develop, but there are also signs of colder air
being dragged into the system. We shall see. I'd like to
focus on tomorrow night's event before I dive into the
weekend forecast. Check back for updates on the forecast.
