October Snow: The Models Show a Chance This Afternoon Closer To Home

Guns and Roses sang November Rain, but should someone write a song about October Snow? Even the pumpkins were shocked. Last week I mentioned a snowstorm I experience on Halloween at Cornell (Ithaca, NY), but it's still a rarity for them too. Lots of schools were closed and power went out from the heavy snow and high winds.
I have posted the Snow Totals on my story with abc2news.com

Some of the snow amounts over 1 foot extended into the Poconos of northestern PA. Even western Maryland got in on the act.

Here is a snapshot from this morning, showing the snow on the ground at Frostburg State University. Our floor director told me this morning that her daughter went to school there just so she could have more snow. That's a woman after my own heart.






Here is a new, cleaner view of the Upper Level Energy at 500mb (around 18,000ft). This shows the potential for showers to carry over the mountains and reach central Maryland this afternoon and evening.
I've analyzed the wind direction off of the Lakes...and circled the vort max in the orange shading over central Maryland. This is the spin of energy tat should carry the showers over the mountains. The Number [540] is 5400m and represents the thickness of the atmosphere which translates to a layer of near freezing air aloft. Colder air contracts and is less thick in between certain layers.
While downtown temperatures should be around 47F, I expect lower 40s or colder up north near the PA. So the Hereford Zone of Baltimore County and Carroll County should have snowflakes mixed in, thanks to colder cloud temperatures. A burst may occur close to dark, that could coat the grass, but the ground is still relatively warm, so the roads will be fine.
Tomorrow and Halloween we get back to more sun, and a gradual warm up.

Snow North, Foliage From Space

It snowed! It really snowed! Well up north in NY State.... but it did what it was suppose to. Here is the Satellite/Radar image from 5:30 this morning- along with my analysis. Strong wind wrapping into a developing Low Pressure off of the New England Coast and pulled cold air south, and helped produce snow showers off of Lakes Erie and Ontario. As I showed yesterday, the upper level support may carry some of these clouds far enough south to cover northern Maryland, but the flakes will not make it here. The same wind off of the lakes that gets enhanced while moving up higher terrain, dries out moving down the mountains as it heads here. Only under special conditions can we get some of that our way.
It may not be that far off. After this weekend's storm, an impulse of energy combined with a surge of colder air will reach us on Monday. Below you can see the surface and 500mb maps for Monday.
On the Left is the Surface map showing a small but potent Low Pressure developing off of the coast, and the pink shading showing the area where showers are likely. This image also shows the potential freezing line (5400m thickness from 100mb to 500mb) which I highlighted in white. That is far enough south to support at least snow flakes at cloud level.



Here is the upper level 500mb map for the same time frame. This shows a vigorous upper level feature or vort max, which is often what I use to sniff out snow showers days ahead. This is not a big storm, but it is following the track just to our south, that is most promising is you want some flakes. It might be a bit premature to mention this on TV, but I will lean in this direction


This is the latest image from MODIS on NASA's Tera Satellite. It was taken over a week ago on October 12th, but it does show the areas of near and past peak very well. They look reddish/brown and dominate the mountains up to our north.
It will be interesting to see the next image from our region, as well head into peak color in the next week or two. Below is the latest local update from the Foliage Network for the Mid Atlantic and South East.