Wednesday is a fiasco but we may rise from the ashes on Friday

I had also teased about a possible snow scenario for Monday night leading into Tuesday morning. Clouds will gather on Monday and precipitation should arrive in the form of snow either late in the evening or early Tuesday morning. The latest model cross sections however are showing a lot of warm air arriving very quickly and thus there is a real risk for precipitation going to freezing rain by Tuesday's first tracks time even if there is some new snow. Its another game of timing where the amount of new snow will depend heavily on the amount of moisture that arrives prior to this change-over time. Its still early to pin-point an exact change-over time but a range is 5 and 11 am on Tuesday.

Wednesday
The first wave of precipitation will consist of snow, sleet and freezing rain which will give way to drizzle and fog Tuesday afternoon or evening. At that point there are strong indications that the push of warm air will simply be too great to hold back and temperatures will become uniformly above freezing from the surface to several thousand feet into the atmosphere. This sets the stage for our second wave of precipitation and big time trouble. The rain is nearly a certainty during the day Wednesday for a period but we are also running a risk of high winds combined with high dewpoint temperatures which is a recipe for some serious base-eating. We could still pull an Indiana Jones and hop our way past a few of these land mines but we must face the rain on Wednesday like the true East Coast skiers we are.

Friday potential
There is much better news for Friday and in to the weekend. I had discussed the east coast trough amplification that seemed likely a few days ago and is now more certain. We arn't so certain about the new snow potential and a lot will depend on the eventual strength of a weak disturbance embedded within the southern portion of the Pacific Jet. The storm is shown to intensify quickly as it interacts with the Atlantic Coast and our hope is that it moves our way as opposed to moving too far out in to the Atlantic. There is also a clipper system looking to align itself with its southern counterpart and should at the very least bring us a few inches of new snow by Saturday. After Wednesday's rain we are obviously hoping and are owed much more. There is some potential here but we need a bit more potentcy from this system for us to really score big.

A long range tease - More on Monday
I'll detail the longer range more on Monday but it I think we will need to jump one more big hurdle around the 12th or 13th of the month before we have real hope for a pattern change. At that point I am seeing a shift in the AO and more sustainable good weather could be the result by the President's Day holiday.