Sunday January 9 2022 Forecast (8:37AM)

57 Comments

DAYS 1-5 (JANUARY 9-13)

It’s an active pattern now after winter’s so-called “slow start”, which wasn’t really a slow start, it was just kind of typical for a La Nina pattern, and so is what we’re about to experience, just a little different from what we had. After our recent snow, we had a beautiful winter’s day on Saturday with lots of sun, a diminishing wind, and cold that was tolerable without wind. Today, as the atmosphere tries to warm up, and a low pressure system passes to our north sending precipitation our way, it’s warming up enough aloft so that precipitation is going to be falling as raindrops or melting from snowflakes into raindrops as it exits its birthing region in the middle troposphere. From there it will fall into colder air closer to the ground. It’s going to reach the surface in the form of rain for most, although the cold air may be thick enough to freeze it into ice pellets (sleet) over some interior areas for a while this morning. In a large portion of the region away from the immediate coast, the temperatures sit below freezing (from the upper 20s to very low 30s) as the initial batches of rain will be moving in from west to east. This spells freezing rain, and will create slippery conditions on untreated surfaces. Eventually, the surface temperatures will warm enough to eliminate this issue, but it may take several hours to do so, until a warm front gets by our area and the surfaces temperatures warm sufficiently to the upper 30s to near 40 later today. In the mean time, if you plan to be out driving or walking, keep in mind that untreated surface may be glazed with ice that is difficult to see. And tonight, once we get the cold front through, our rain threat ends, but cold air comes in quickly and again any wet and untreated surfaces will return to their icy state, being a factor later tonight as well as tomorrow until they can be treated or dry off (sublimate) enough. Tomorrow’s weather will be mainly fair, but windy and on the cold side, however this will be nothing compared to the air mass that arrives tomorrow evening with an arctic cold front, possibly announced by some snow showers and snow squalls. I’ll fine-tune that threat on the next update to the best of my ability. Squalls or no squalls though, that air mass means business, bold and cold, and Tuesday’s temperatures will struggle to be above 10 for most of us during the day, with wind chills well below zero. When we moderate back to the 20s Wednesday and the 30s Thursday, it may feel like a veritable heatwave in comparison. We’ll also have to watch a weak disturbance or two coming along from the Great Lakes / Midwest by midweek for some minor light snow threats, but these don’t look too impressive to me at the moment.

TODAY: Cloudy. Episodes of rain possibly mixed with sleet this morning, with freezing rain away from the coast eventually transitioning to non-freezing rain later in the day. Highs 36-43 occurring late in the day, except 43-50 Cape Cod. Wind calm early, then S up to 10 MPH, shifting to SW and increasing to 10-20 MPH by late in the day.

TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy evening including a chance of rain showers South Coast / Cape Cod. Clearing overnight. Black ice formation on untreated surfaces. Lows 22-29. Wind NW 10-20 MPH. Wind chill below 15 at times.

MONDAY: Mostly sunny to partly cloudy. Isolated late-day snow showers. Highs 25-32. Wind W 10-20 MPH.

MONDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy with a chance of snow showers / squalls evening. Clear overnight. Lows 3-10. Wind NW 10-20 MPH and gusty. Wind chill -5 to -15.

TUESDAY: Sunny. Highs 8-15. Wind WNW 10-20 MPH. Wind chill below 0.

TUESDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows -2 to +5. Wind NW 5-15 MPH, diminishing. Wind chill -5 to -15 evening.

WEDNESDAY: Increasing clouds. Chance of light snow late-day. Highs 22-29. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Scattered light snow possible. Lows 15-22. Wind variable under 10 MPH.

THURSDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 30-37. Wind SW up to 10 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (JANUARY 14-18)

We enter a period of vulnerability to be impacted by first a storm over the ocean to our south, and second a low pressure area moving this way from the Midwest. It’s far too early to tell if we’ll be directly impacted by either or both of these threats, but it is something we should pay close attention to. Temperatures during this period will run below to near normal.

DAYS 11-15 (JANUARY 19-23)

Basically the situation of the previous period is expected to continue this period as well, with us in a pattern that’s vulnerable to cold and some threat of wintry precipitation. As you have already heard countless times, we can’t just look at run-to-run model guidance to try to pin point which days carry the highest threats and what might happen in each location. You know the drill by now – just something to watch and fine-tune things with time.

57 thoughts on “Sunday January 9 2022 Forecast (8:37AM)”

  1. TK, thank you.

    Walked the shore early and experienced two 15 second episodes of freezing rain I think. (Sleet maybe…?)

    Thank you again.

    1. We’re already glazed over here. Perfect set-up for icing. Thankfully it won’t last long enough nor will we have enough freezing rain to cause tree / power outage issues.

  2. Good morning and thank you TK.
    Another nice job on the discussion.

    Can’t wait to see today’s rendition of the GFS and Euro. Should be fun.

    Here’s hoping that ocean storm nails us. I love ocean storms.

  3. Thanks TK.

    Finally an active pattern ahead with below normal temperatures.

    TK – Will overnight become a widespread flash freeze on ALL surfaces or just patches of ice on sidewalks here and there?

  4. We’re up to 34 here in JP, but that is at 4 1/2 feet above the ground. We could still freeze at the surface for a brief period

  6. Even though it is January, we’re still dealing with December ocean temperatures. We’re still running close to 5 degrees above average.

    1. That’s probably why Tom had rain during the last event. Ocean temperatures “should” be getting good and cold this time of year, but I guess due to climate change that won’t be happening anymore, at least not in our remaining lifetimes. I can’t recall any recent winters of temperatures lower than 40 degrees.

      1. That’s not really true.
        There are a lot of things that drive ocean temps.
        And the coldest is in February and March.

  14. I’m sure one or more will be back, but it’s interesting to see that all of the big activity portrayed by several previous GFS runs
    are now all gone on the 12Z run.

    Here we go again. How about some decent medium range guidance. Wow!

    CMC still has one decent system. We shall see about the Euro

    https://maps2.pivotalweather.com/maps/models/gdps/2022010912/174/prateptype.us_ne.png

    https://maps2.pivotalweather.com/maps/models/gdps/2022010912/240/snku_acc.us_ne.png

    1. No surprise. We’ll have better medium range guidance when the “upgrades” are actually upgrades. A few of them worked, but it seems the last couple have actually been downgrades. I guess that’s part of it all – like when a bad update gets sent to the phone and then they need to update the update to fix the bugs. It just takes longer in the world of modeling.

      It’s more important to study and observe the trends in the overall pattern, such as WxW highlighted on his post yesterday.

  16. In talks about the Ocean temperatures.
    1. There are indeed many aspects of ocean temperature controls.
    Ocean currents, salinity levels, storm activity, Chlorophyll, Air mass locations, Carbon and Oxygen levels and thermoclines and many more.
    2. Ocean averages have been extremely warm, the GOM is the fastest warming body of water there is on the planet. We have only seen 4/11 December SSTS normal or below avg SSTS which do not account to the deeper levels which have been above normal all 11. This is also against the new normal SSTS anomalies. All 11 would be considered above average besides for 2 of the past 11 which averaged around normal compared to the old 30 year average.
    3. Coldest temperatures are generally February but 3/10 were normal/below normal compared to new averages. All would be considered above normal compared to old averages.
    4. This is why I have issues with people saying oh look below average temperatures when in fact if you looked at the older averages they are indeed not. We saw a major jump in the new normal SSTS off the NE coast especially the Gulf of maine.
    5. There are indeed natural cycles also in play but a good amount of it is due to human activity impact. You can see this in model depictions of what its showing vs if no human impact.

    2. After that Sunday/Monday threat next weekend, the 12z Euro has a second coastal storm threat on the 19th and also sends that mostly to the south. I’m sure it will change many more times but the important thing is that the pattern is there and these threats continue to show up in that time frame in some form or another on all of the models.

    1. He had to choose “Sandy” for impact. There have been COUNTLESS storms with long lifetimes like that. It happens a couple times a year in the western Atlantic, on average, if not several times.

      I like this guy, but I don’t think that was a good choice. My opinion.

  20. Nice, crisp day skiing at Killington yesterday. It didnt get much above 10 but it was tolerable for the most part as the winds werent too bad aside from the highest elevations. Visibility was incredible with a clear view of the Adirondack High Peaks to the west and Presidentials to the Northeast.

    They had received only 3″ of fresh snow from the last storm but really need a good dumping at some point to open a lot more terrain and improve conditions on what they have open now. The trails with snowmaking have great cover but by the end of the morning they get scraped off and icy pretty fast. Hopefully one of these upcoming threats produces.

    2. That ski area in in North Carolina of all places. Some unreal elevation for the East coast.

      Acreage: 95 skiable acres
      Peak Elevation: 5,506 feet
      Base Elevation: 4,675 feet
      Vertical Rise: 830 feet

    2. Just heartbreaking.

      The report said the door was open in the apartment where the fire started which could have added to the speed it spread. But I don’t know how accurate that is.

      1. It’s likely the door was open, and that style of building is fairly open from floor to floor. It’s the perfectly “bad” set-up for this kind of thing. A lot of air movement within the building and when it’s closed up, poor ventilation out of it. 🙁

  23. Wow, CPC’s week 3-4 temperature outlook has the most “below normal” on it since they started that product.

  24. Weird, crazy finish to the season. Colts are out, losing to Jacksonville, of all teams. Steelers are in … unless tonight’s game ends in a tie. And here, we’ve got a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts going on – for those of you who’ve studied philosophy or logic you’ll know what I’m talking about. If tonight’s game between the Raiders and Chargers ends in a tie – 0-0, for instance – both teams are in, and the Steelers are out. If there’s a winner of the Raiders-Chargers game that team goes through to the playoffs, along with the Steelers, and the loser goes home.

  25. Most of the higher res short range guidance has some kind of snow squall threat for the WHW forecast area from late Monday afternoon to the middle of Monday evening.

      2. I agree. This is a wonderful song from a wonderful band. I happened to spot this comment on the video:

        I will always remember: at one of Roger’s concerts in London he was closing with this song, and I looked over at the man in the next seat beside me. He was on his feet dancing and singing along with every fibre of his being, with bright twinkles in his eyes, teardrops falling from the corner of his eyes. I could see how this song had touched him, and in turn it also touched me deeply. After the song, I reached over to give him a hug, and we’ve been friends ever since. Roger’s music is very special in that way!

  27. I don’t know if folks here are Full House or the more recent Fuller House fans. My whole family is. Bob Saget …the dad…passed away today. I don’t know from what. He was 65. So horribly sad

    1. America’s Funniest Home Videos as well.

      He died in his hotel room in Florida while on a comedy show tour. They ruled out foul play and drugs. Sounds to me like maybe a heart attack or stroke. Very sad.

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