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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

What goes up, Must Come Down...

"Spinnin' wheel, got to go 'round"- Blood Sweat and Tears.
Another 60's throw back for you Classic Rock fans. Yesterday behaved as expected, except the temperature shot higher (71F-not a record). now we watch the downward slide on the thermometer. I had a conversation with some of the guys at the gym yesterday... we were talking about the big warm ups before some of the historic storms in Baltimore. It is a sign of volatility and atmospheric energy as a ridge that will bring that warm air will be followed by a deeper trough with colder air to feed into a new storm. If you remember something like this- share it in the comment section below.
First thing to watch is how the temperatures behave. I have called for 44F today and 38F tomorrow. If it verifies colder, then the models may not be handling this very well. The cold air will get reinforced by a clipper passing tomorrow afternoon. I have noticed that the trend has pushed it farther south in the past few days. Here is the NAM outlook for Wednesday afternoon. It may not look like much, but it is now poised to give us up to 1 inch of snow as it locks in the arctic air. I do think we have a chance to clear out in time for the Total Lunar Eclipse Wednesday night.

Spinning the wheels for the end of the week, and it looks like your wheels will be spinning on something Friday morning. While there is a tremendous amount of information to digest, I know I have lost some of you with technical overload here. I still plan on getting some of the highlights out, but here is a simplified breakdown for the two primary mid range models I have been following. The Canadian on the right shows an inland track that will likely start as snow Thursday night, but bring ice Friday morning. Depending on the true behavior, this could be a heavy ice event, or eventually turn to rain as the surface low passed just north and west of central Maryland dragging in warmer air. This would be heavier precipiation, but gone Saturday. It does set up a coastal storm for us on Monday.

The GFS model projection here keeps the surface low to our south. That means precipitation will not be as heavy, but stay snow or ice. Little or no rain with this scenario... The GFS does linger snow showers into the weekend with one last burst Sunday morning. It brings another storm (inland runner) our way Tuesday.

Again, this is the over simplified version of what I see now. But I will follow throughout the week. I will introduce more models projections as I see fit, but these will be the benchmarks for how many forecasts will evolve over the week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems to me that I remember the "Blizzard of 93" was like that. It was pretty late in the season - mid-March. I was on spring break from school, and my memory was that it definitely was warm not long after the storm. I don't remember as well, what happened before but I bet it was mild.

Justin Berk, AMS CBM said...

The week before temperatures did get close to 60F, and hit 68F at the end of the month. That was a special event. The blizzard of '96 was followed by 60s and a quick melt.