Sunday February 14 2021 Forecast (7:55AM)

96 Comments

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 14-18)

The pattern is the same – we remain in the moisture conveyor belt between cold air to the north and west and warm air over the southeastern US. Adjustments to the outlook have been made to indicate more warming aloft due to a stronger ridge of high pressure – yes the ridge we’ve waited for to appear, nearly declared a total failure, then decides to show up in this La Nina pattern. Anyway here we go with a continued series of low pressure areas moving along. We’ve had one go by last night and early today, causing some slippery roads from freezing rain/drizzle near the South Coast, and the next one Monday will really just contain a spotty light precipitation variety. There are two more coming along that have more moisture to work with, Tuesday, and Thursday night into Friday, with a dry/cold interlude Wednesday. Each of these final two systems can produce a complex precipitation pattern with snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain, depending on the temperature profile of the atmosphere and temperatures at the surface. That’ll be fun to figure out over the coming days…

TODAY: Cloudy. Highs 27-34. Wind N up to 10 MPH.

TONIGHT: Cloudy. Lows 22-29. Wind N up to 10 MPH.

MONDAY (PRESIDENTS DAY): Cloudy. Occasional light snow/sleet likely, with freezing rain/drizzle possible. Highs 27-34. Wind N 5-15 MPH.

MONDAY NIGHT: Cloudy. Spotty light snow or snow/sleet mix evening. Steady snow/sleet/freezing rain/rain arriving overnight. Temperatures steady 27-34. Wind N to NE 5-15 MPH.

TUESDAY: Overcast. Snow/sleet/freezing rain/rain likely, tapering off from west to east later in the day. Highs 29-36. Wind NE to N 5-15 MPH.

TUESDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Lows 18-25. Wind N to NW 5-15 MPH.

WEDNESDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 25-32. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Increasing high clouds. Lows 13-20. Wind N up to 10 MPH.

THURSDAY: Thickening overcast. Snow arriving by late-day, may turn to sleet/freezing rain/rain at night. Highs 25-32, but temperatures may rise at night. Wind NE 5-15 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 19-23)

Mix/rain most likely February 19 as low pressure passes by the region probably just to the south. Dry, seasonably cold February 20-21 weekend. Another disturbance may bring some snow/mix to the region in the February 22-23 window.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 24-28)

We may see a transition out of blocking into more of a west zonal pattern with a storm track bringing weaker systems over or north of the region. This would produce a couple risk of precipitation and some swings in temperature.

96 thoughts on “Sunday February 14 2021 Forecast (7:55AM)”

  2. Saw somewhere on FB that Texas has never had cold weather combined with 2 snowstorms. Never? How about many times before…

    Texas is also a big state, so they may want to specify. Weather misinformation at it again…

    Drama continues to be more important that actual information, as usual. 😉

    1. Was watching CNN around 4:50am and the meteorologist said that the damage from the storms this week will be comparable to a category 5 hurricane…..He also said he never seen more than 50 percent of the country under winter weather alerts in his career….

      1. The first thing is misleading. I hope they made reference and clarification. Like this…

        “Hurricane “X”, a CAT 5 storm, caused $X in damage when it struck on . The total damage from this week’s winter storms may add up to something very similar.” Better yet, wait until the week is over to see if it actually happens, then report it as a factual news item. That’s how it should be done.

        The second thing would depend on how long the career has been, so that’s entirely possible. This is a pretty “widespread” impact cold / winter weather outbreak. Ironically (kidding) it’s coming in the winter. 😉 Yes, this one does have pretty widespread impact but it’s NOT unprecedented. The media needs to learn the difference between “a long time between events” and “never happened before”. They clearly DO NOT.

        1. MEDIA HYPE is what it is all about. AND it gets sickening at times. I can remember this happening many times.

          Hey this stuff happens.

          1. It’s just so entirely disappointing. I’ve learned to be a very tolerant person but I have very little patience for this kind of stuff. I just don’t understand how somebody can feel good about hype for the sake of ratings for the sake of money. My purpose with media is to bring actual information to people. It’s not really that difficult…

              1. I wouldn’t either. I guess my problem is with those that are putting the pressure on them. That’s where the problem begins…

                1. I absolutely agree with that as you know. It is, as you also know 🙂 , why I react to negatives. They get pressure from management and from public. I’m happy to stand in their corner.

  3. Good morning and thank you TK.

    I see nothing but a mess with plenty of plain rain for the coastal plain.

    This set up looks putrid to me! Utterly disgusting!
    I hope we can get a shift SE of 50-100 miles. Not likely, but I suppose possible. Sure doesn’t look that way to me.

    I saw a few lonely snow flakes around Midnight last night, then it was GONE!

  5. Thanks TK. What are the odds for a damaging ice storm here tomorrow night into Tuesday. I’m thinking today would be the day to begin preparing. Thanks again

  6. I know this is the million dollar question but any thoughts on how far rain penetrates inland and where ice builds up on Tuesday.

  9. Yes, I believe a significant freezing rain risk in the not too distant interior.

    Mid levels trending even milder, but surface, in my opinion, not really trending milder at all.

    Maybe the heaviest precip can end up north and west of the ice zone.

  11. That SE Ridge is now going to pretty much chop down, if not eliminate any more potential snow opportunities especially for eastern SNE. Interior ice events will now be the main concern and flooded basements/drains due to melting snow for east coastal sections.

    Nothing good ever comes from a SE Ridge.

      1. I think they can, small chance, because we´ve seen some systems where the wind stays north in Boston during an event.

        It wouldn´t be the 26F nasty ice potential inland, but a 31F or 32F event in Boston, where car windshields, side walks, etc could end up slippery, if not treated.

    2. Not at all. Plenty of times the SE ridge is active and the polar jet is active and we get huge storms. It’s all about timing.

      Here we go with winter is over talk like every year. I am all for nice warm weather but that’s not a reality in this part of the country.

    3. As I have stated many times before and will repeat yet again…
      a ridge in the southeast does not automatically take away snowfall opportunities. It depends on the pattern and right now the pattern is for stronger influxes of warmer air aloft.

  13. if you look at what is really happened at the initialize hour of the models and look at the initialize of the models, they match more with the cooler solutions if I am not mistaken. I am not really buying real pure rain any where west of I95 at this time in SNE. In terms of the ice, the worst of it I feel will occur across areas along and south of the mass pike as well as interior valleys

    1. In Boston it will be primarily rain. I don’t see it any other way.
      I would like to be wrong, BUT if we are not to get snow, then I will take rain over Freezing rain any day. 🙂

      1. It’s been amusing watching the GFS correct very slowly run-by-run on the track of that low.

        It may be even more amusing that during the past 10 days, the Canadian model set leads the pack in performance, i.e., sniffing out the outcomes before both ECMWF & GFS.

        1. Isn’t that something. I have noticed that at least on a few occasions. Mostly I have not been paying too close attention to that.

  17. So, staying with no primary lows passing to our (WHW forecast area) north for quite a while. I haven’t changed that thinking. What we’ve had to adjust for as we get closer is the amount of warmth aloft. This is not a surprise. Remember guidance performance, and why leaning toward a colder solution as not always going to result in a snowy solution. The cold air doesn’t like to move that much at ground level with a good snow cover, and believe me the guidance is still not forecasting surface temperatures cold enough in most locations. This is going to be an issue if the warmth aloft is strong enough – because that translates to at least a narrow strip of potential major icing. It’s been a while, and if a pattern is going to produce it, this is the one. We’ve been worried about this potential for quite some time, and honestly we’ve been lucky that we haven’t set it up like this sooner. We may be able to get away with only 1 (maybe 2) events to really worry about before the pattern changes enough that the chance of a similar event drops off…

    P.S. … I wonder if I am under-estimating the magnitude of the cold air mass that’s coming in here next weekend. Hmm…re-evaluating that soon.

    1. Is that the core of cold that has been in the news out west? I recall Pete saying that it isn’t really coming east all that much.

      1. Most certainly. It’s not record-shattering in terms of magnitude, but it’s notable in areal coverage. It was never slated to blast into the East, only “leak” into the Northeast, which is exactly what happened. You may recall this in my blog forecast (and talked about by other mets on the blog) a couple weeks ago.

        I am of the opinion that events like this are going to be increasing in frequency again as the AMO continues its downslide toward its next negative phase. My other theory is that our springs will warm and our autumns will cool, not to the point that autumn will become cooler than spring, but they will be closer together over the long-term (a few decades). I’ll let you know how this verifies in about 30 years. 😉

          1. That’s a simple question with a complex answer. We won’t know for a while.

            Can we infer from the -AMO that we’ll have a period of time where snow is less prolific? Well, we can do that somewhat. We had some lean snow years in the 1970s & 1980s, especially the 1980s, but we also had our share of big events in there too. Starting in the early 1990s, the long-term snowfall average is definitely higher (reflected directly in Boston’s updated average seasonal snowfall). But I think there is more to it than just + or – AMO. All indices’ phases and frequency of those phases must be taken into account.

  20. Thank you, TK.

    Looks like ski country is going to get all snow from the next few systems, plus plenty of cold.

    2. A matter of time until they start picking up on and correctly forecasting the surface cold. The models ALWAYS miss this at first, and most people always fall for that model shortcoming.

  24. The storm track currently is positioned for coastal huggers. If the SE Ridge was positioned as such to allow systems to pass just a bit offshore, I could see snow for us, easily.

    Is the ridge just a bit too strong right now for “coastal” snow events? Or is it position? Or both?

    Am I getting it yet? 🙂

    1. For this week, or at least for the Tuesday event, the idea is we have just a bit too much ability to warm aloft from a stronger magnitude ridge. It would not take much to go into a snowier regime. However, the regime itself may break down somewhat heading toward late month anyway. But that doesn’t mean we can’t go into a different pattern that could deliver us some snow events. Long way from winter being over. Rewinding a bit, I’m not convinced that the Thursday/Friday event sees a switch to rain more than just near the South Coast. I suspect our guidance is going to shift this to a colder system as we get closer to it.

        1. Above was this morning’s NAM and it has sleet included in that 10:1 snow.

          For example 0.5 inch qpf would equal 5 inches of snow, however, it would likely yield about 0.1 inch of sleet approximately, assuming sleet is a 2:1 ratio (that is reasonable, but it depends on the pellet dimension and how much air there is between each pellet as it accumulates. Sleet can vary with ration 1:1 to about 3:1 at most, that is why I chose 2:1.

          Any how it demonstrates the point.

    2. MASSIVE sleet poisoning there. The inexperienced see the numbers and run with them. This is when it’s important to know WHY those numbers are so high.

  30. Winter Storm Watches posted for parts of the interior for our next storm system. This to me is about the ice and not the snowfall.

    3. Interesting that NYC is under a WWA and Boston has nothing. They’ve really had quite a winter so far. They probably have a better chance of a true ice storm than Boston. How often does THAT happen?

  31. So for some reason I had tomorrow night in mind for the start. I see the watch says afternoon. I would sure appreciate advice again on timing. Monday seems to be the day for these things and my oldest is teaching in Millis again and did plan to ride after the lessons. She would leave Millis around 3:30 to head home to Uxbridge.

    Is there a chance she might hit icing mid to late afternoon? Thank you very much!

    1. Just my thoughts…

      I think the worst of it doesn’t start until after midnight.
      There could be some spotty frozen precip tomorrow PM,
      but I wouldn’t think it would be too bad.

      Please confirm with TK.

    2. With the boundary in place and enough lift, we could be seeing precipitation generated and moving into the area as early as early to mid afternoon, so based on the potential, I totally agree with what they have done. The higher threat definitely does come later though (after dark, especially later at night).

      1. Thank you both. I definitely was not questioning afternoon. Just checking to see if travel would be safe for daughter. Snow is bad enough, but ice is nasty

  34. I’ve tried to keep up with the options for Tuesday but with slight snow and ice forecast, does that mean it’s likely to be old fashioned rain in Natick or is it too soon to make that call?

  35. It’s very rare to see Houston and San Antonio colder than Boston in winter. Today and tomorrow both cities are MUCH colder. While Boston gets a mix of precipitation, Houston gets a winter storm with snow. Now that, my friends, is really unusual. So much so that I fear for the very large homeless populations in those cities. This is going to be a killer cold snap, not just on the roads.

    1. When we combine PV disruption with a classic La Nina, that’s when it’s bound to happen at least in some aspect. Now, we have it. When we push something south, something else has to go north.

  38. Just took a look at the entire 00z model suite and if the models are correct, this is looking like primarily a plain rain event for the majority of SNE. Perhaps a more extended period of icing across the distant interior (western and north central MA) but seems like this is shaping up to be a non-event. Low track too close to us with warm air aloft flooding overhead and marginal surface temps. At midnight it’s 32F here so not a lot of cold air at the surface to scour out.

  39. Amazing the difference between the 0z Canadian and GFS for the Friday storm. Canadian with pretty much a benchmark track and all snow event for most while the GFS keeps insisting on a cutter with a thump of snow to mix to rain. Hopefully the Canadian continues with its hot streak.

    1. Also FWIW, GFS seems to be trending back colder in the long range as well with a couple more threats the last week of Feb.

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