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Thursday, February 16, 2012

No Big Storm Sunday

Yay! I am relieved this morning to find a model consensus for Sunday! The massive east coast storm will pass too far south and east, missing us here in Connecticut!

Right now an area of low pressure is beginning to form in the southwestern US. The storm will then scoot over the western Gulf of Mexico where it will blossom thanks to an influx of moisture.

Yesterday one of the computer models that we trust (GFS) showed the storm tracking over the sweet spot southeast of CT with up to 2 feet of snow! (See my blog post from yesterday.) The other models that we trust (like the Euro) showed a track that took the storm 100s of miles south of the state with no impact.

Today the computer models are in better agreement. The Euro has come north and the GFS has moved south. The result is something in the middle with a storm moving offshore between Virginia and North Carolina. The result is a storm JUST missing us here in CT or at worst grazing the shoreline with some flurries.

Sound familiar? The last storm on Saturday did the same thing, as have many storms this winter. That’s because the southern branch of the Jet Stream (which provides the moisture) and the northern branch of the Jet Stream (which provides the cold arctic air) are not coming together. They rarely do in La Nina years. In order to get a big coastal storm, like the snowmageddons we had last winter, we would need these Jet Streams to phase.

Meanwhile, a weak storm in the Ohio Valley will clip the area today with a period of rain. This storm is a weak one, and may drop as much as 0.25" of liquid precipitation by Friday morning before pulling away from the region. The Litchfield Hills and higher elevations have a chance to see some light snow and sleet instead.

High pressure will build into the region Friday and Saturday with plenty of sunshine and mild temperatures with highs reaching the upper 40's to near 50 and overnight lows in the 20's.

Here are the 12z (morning) runs of the Euro and GFS for midday Sunday. You can compare them to yesterday's model runs in the blog post below. What a difference!

The Euro midday Sunday


The GFS midday Sunday

1 comment:

Thomas Moyers said...

I'm happy that there isn't any storms this weekend. It was a beautiful day for a drive today. Too bad I didn't take a drive instead of running errands.

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