1st Call Snow Map, March 4th-5th

Night ya'll check in the am

c/s nj does not do well because first wave is almost all rain.

That seems strange that it has no real heavy band there.

Yeah me too. The latest RGEM is a big improvement especially for the HV.

frank I think there is going to be a very narrow band of up to 12" others wise most areas end up with 6" + ratios

Last time NYC saw 12"+ of snow in March was 1993

GFS initialized

RGEM is a great run, as long as NAM doesnt continue to shift south and models hold serve thru tomorrow along with GFS this should be a nice event for DC/PHI/NYC

Heights look higher to me. Should be north of 18z. That's not saying much anyway. That run was an anomaly.

Hour 24...this is coming north. Lets see by how much

Barely north. It's still ugly especially for NYC north

Models not in agreement...annoying.

Frank_Wx wrote:Models not in agreement...annoying.

It really is annoying. This close to an event, it's just ridiculous.

How much does NYC get with the GFS.Nothing?

and we thought we had it last night, only good thing about that is that no one can get upset yet lol

Abba701 wrote:How much does NYC get with the GFS.Nothing?

3-6

Take a look at the current H5:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/s19/500mb/500mb_sf.gif?1425440802130

It looks like the 552 dam trough axis may be a touch less positively tilted than guidance (mainly the SREFs, since they are the only ones I can get H5 maps for) suggested it should be at this time. It's also highly possible/likely I'm grasping at straws here lol I'll be back tomorrow at some point lmao

That's not so
Much worse then 4-8

As for the globals, it's inconclusive since I cannot get them in three hour increments. Good night all!!!

From what i can see, so many people will be upset with snow totals because jackpots will be 25 miles wide. and cutoffs will be sharp. Anything at 6 inches should be a gift this time of year.

I posted this on another website so I wanted to know what you guys thought of it.

Update on the next 48 hours and beyond:
Within the next hour or so the ice/rain in the NYC region will be tapering off as temperatures gradually warm up towards 40 for tomorrow as we will have on and off rain showers throughout the day. By nightfall, the cold front will bring precipitation in the form of rain for the I-95 corridor along with coastal regions. By the wee hours of Thursday morning, it changes over. This is where things get a bit tricky. I have noticed a couple of things today:

1) Some areas in the northeast may go over to ice before going over to snow.
2) The trend has been for this system to move further south giving NYC/LI and northern suburbs less snow and the region from Washington DC to Philadelphia to the Jersey shore more snow.

As of right now, I expect 4-8” of snow for NYC/LI, less than 4" of snow for areas north of NYC, and 8-12” of snow for places south of NYC. If this trend continues for the next 12 hours, these snow totals may be lowered by a lot. On the other hand, if we see a sudden shift in the other direction (northward), the snow totals for NYC/LI may be increased.
Some other things to point out:

1) With the rain tomorrow, there will be localized street flooding issues with melting snow.
2) Thursday night, temperatures will drop into the teens so black ice could be an issue then even if we do not get as much snow as I mentioned above.
3) The weekend and the beginning of next week looks to be sunny with highs in the 40s, which would mean a lot of melting snow, especially with the high March sun angle. While these temperatures would be welcoming to a lot of people (myself included), localized street flooding will be a factor here as well. It would not surprise me if, with the exception of tall snow banks, much of the snowpack is gone by this time next week.

I hope to have another update tomorrow morning before I head off to work.

You have to understand. A deviation of 25 miles can make or break forecasts. You can not expect a model to be within 25 miles , even at this point in time, when just a slight movement in the general upper level flow along with small curvatures in the upper flow ( small undefined disturbances) that the models don't see sometimes. I think the models are fairly close in general. The key is, will we get some kind of sharpening of any trough in any portion of the atmosphere? Temp gradient is not going to do it with this one.

GFS trended south, ugh this is what I did not want to see and tosses a wrench into the forecast as usual.

Which has been more accurate this winter? The GFS or the RGEM?

snow247 wrote:Which has been more accurate this winter? The GFS or the RGEM?

RGEM under 24-36 hours

Frank_Wx wrote:

snow247 wrote:Which has been more accurate this winter? The GFS or the RGEM?

RGEM under 24-36 hours

And we are getting into/into that range, so shouldn't we trust the RGEM at least a bit more due to it's accuracy lately instead of the GFS?

I am also reading that the GFS tends to struggle with these types of storms, what's your take on that?