Tuesday Forecast

104 Comments

7:27AM

DAYS 1-5 (JANUARY 7-11)
A small, fast-moving, but intensifying low pressure area forming in the Mid Atlantic will track off the coast and pass just southeast of New England tonight and early Wednesday, producing a mini snowstorm for southeastern New England before exiting. In its wake, a shot of cold air will arrive, perhaps with some additional snow showers Wednesday, and it will be quite cold for Thursday. Although as has been the characteristic of early winter, this cold shot will be short-lived, and moderating temperatures will already be felt by Friday, leading to a rather warm Saturday as low pressure tracks through the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Valley and we end up in a moderate to strong southwesterly air flow. We may see a touch of light rain and sleet early Friday as a warm front passes, and then our warmer air arrives. A cold front will try to approach on Saturday but will be held at bay initially by strong high pressure offshore, and that may also keep rain chances down as well, keeping the wet weather mostly west and north of the region to start the weekend.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Sunshine followed by increasing clouds. Highs 33-40. Wind W up to 10 MPH.
TONIGHT: Cloudy. Snow arrives late evening from southwest to northeast but may start as rain/mix Cape Cod, steadiest overnight I-95 southeastward. Lows 25-32. Wind E 5-15 MPH near the South Coast, variable under 10 MPH elsewhere.
WEDNESDAY: Cloudy with snow early morning, especially I-95 southeast, ending mid morning with accumulation a coating to 1 inch NW of I-95 and 1-3 inches from near I-95 southeastward. Clearing late morning. Sunny afternoon. Highs 32-39. Wind NW increasing to 15-25 MPH with gusts 30-40 MPH.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 15-22. Wind NW 10-20 MPH with higher gusts, diminishing overnight.
THURSDAY: Sunshine and high clouds. Highs 25-32. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Increasing clouds. Lows 18-25 evening, rising slowly overnight. Wind SE under 10 MPH.
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy. Scattered light rain, possibly some sleet interior areas, favoring the morning hours. Highs 40-47. Wind SE under 10 MPH shifting to SW up to 10 MPH.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Temperatures steady 40-47 evening, rising to 50-57 overnight. Wind SW 5-15 MPH, higher gusts.
SATURDAY: Variably cloudy. Risk of a passing rain shower. Highs 55-62. Wind SW 10-20 MPH, higher gusts.

DAYS 6-10 (JANUARY 12-16)
January 12 starts mild with rain then turns sharply colder with rain possibly ending as sleet and/or snow in some locations as the cold front held to the northwest earlier in the weekend moves through. Brief dry, colder weather January 13 then 1 or 2 additional low pressure areas may impact the region middle to end of this period with more unsettled weather.

DAYS 11-15 (JANUARY 17-21)
Still looking at a similar pattern of active weather, probably needing to watch 1 or 2 additional low pressure systems bringing precipitation threats. Far too soon for detail.

104 thoughts on “Tuesday Forecast”

  1. Thanks TK !

    Had an overnight graupel snowshower. And like a summertime shower, it hit the northern half of town with a sharp cutoff right thru the center of town.

  3. Thanks TK!

    With temps expected to be mostly above normal this month, I suspect most if not all these upcoming “precipitation threats” will favor rain over snow. 🙁

    Yesterday Harvey said that we are averaging +11F for the month to date.

    1. Latest NAMS,HRRR and RAP indicate a grand total
      0f 0.1 to 0.6 inch for Boston. Break out the shovels and snow blowers!!
      This is a Biggie!!!!!!

      AHH, but the SREF is saying 2.67 inches. There’s always an OUTLIER! 🙂

      1. Is that the outlier that Harvey mentioned yesterday? He really kept pressing upon it. It was probably a one in a gazillion chance anyway. I don’t understand why he even bothered to put it out there on air to the viewing public. Not that 2-4” is a big deal anyway.

        1. I “think” the outlier yesterday was the RAP, but the RAP
          has come into line with the NAM and HRRR now.

  8. Not sure what the issue is. Perhaps TK, WxWatcher or JMA could comment, but
    the precipitation field does NOT extend too far North of the low center. This particular
    track “normally” would bring an ample snow shield into the Boston area and N&W, yet
    this time it remains more to the South.

    In the NWS discussion indicates that it will pass over the benchmark (normally a snow producer for us!!)

    Southern stream shortwave sweeping through the Midwest today will
    create a surface low that strengthens along the Mid Atlantic
    coast. Meanwhile, a northern stream trough digs through the
    Great Lakes, turning the overall flow more southwest. As a
    result, the coastal low moves northeast and passes offshore of
    the Islands. Current model consensus takes the low through the
    40N/70W benchmark just after midnight and off toward Nova Scotia
    Wednesday morning.

    WEIRD!!!

    Dying to have an explanation for this. Should be a good one.

    The ONLY thing I can come up with on my own is that the 200 MB flow is much flatter
    than the 500 mb flow and is chopping off the Northern extent of the precipitation
    field.

    Any other thoughts from the WHW community???

    1. Moving too fast to pick up additional moisture from the Atlantic and expand the precip shield (snow) northward?

        1. Flatter upper flow, mid level dry air, small system.

          This is a good example of the 40/70 rule not being very good.

          I actually hate the benchmark idea because if you look, about half or more of our good snow storms do not cross the benchmark.

      1. Wouldn’t that have to do with temperatures and not extent
        of precipitation? Or do you mean kuchera snow would be more
        due to that initialization error with bare ground? thanks

  12. TK – Where do many of our good snow events occur then? Certainly not “inside” the benchmark with mixing issues.

    1. Clearly I am not Mark but he did post this yesterday. 🙂

      Mark says:

      January 6, 2020 at 1:27 PM

      Thanks TK.

      Nice wintery scene this AM in Coventry CT with a steady light snow that produced a white coating on all surfaces including roads and sidewalks. The roads in our area were salted.

      Dave, you can mark me down for another 0.4″ of snow from today’s system.

      There was not much at all on the ground by the time I got to work in Manchester so the elevation definitely played a role in helping it to stick better back at the house.

  16. With each successive model run, the snow for tonight keeps going DOWN!

    18Z HRRR now has ZERO snow for Boston
    18Z NAM now has ZERO snow for Boston
    18Z RAP now has 0.1 inch of snow for Boston

    See a trend here?

  19. 7″ of new snow at Killington in the last 36 hours and up to 125+ trails now. Indeed, skiing is great in Northern New England right now. The warmup Saturday is the only hiccup but not too concerned as it will be extremely brief.

    Eric Fisher
    @ericfisher
    20h

    Recent stretch is a good example of how it doesn’t have to be anomalously cold to get snow in New England during January.

    Ski areas actually having one of the better runs of the season lately and the warmest anomalies are there.

    https://twitter.com/ericfisher/status/1214330712406581248?s=20

    1. I love that he points out “mild” does not automatically mean less snow. Of course this doesn’t apply everywhere, always, but this is a good example of where they do not go hand-in-hand.

    1. I don’t trust him as far as I can pick him up and toss him. 🙂
      Would be nice, but I ain’t biting.

    2. Based on the patterns, short, medium, and long term, indices, trends, etc, I’m sorry to say that I believe this is nothing more than a wish-cast.

  21. Here’s another….

    Anthony Siciliano
    @AMSweather
    21h

    About 11 days to go before we shift this pattern around. Hang in there

    1. That source is definitely not one of my go-to sources. 😉 That’s all I’ll say here.

    2. Sounds like Dr. Cohen a while back when he kept forecasting
      Sudden Stratospheric warming leading to cold and stormy weather here. NOT!!!
      It was well into April and it NEVER materialized.

      ha ha ha ha ha

      WISHFUL thinking. Would be nice, but I seriously doubt it.

      1. This is why we hold ten day forecasts with more of a wary eye than a 7 day. Long range forecasting is so difficult and sometimes peoples bias towards what they think people want to hear creeps in.

  23. TK, thanks for your response above.

    The last several EPS runs including the latest have really been pushing the +PNA and ridging out west which gets us colder in the east and should introduce more snow chances here in what is a pretty active pattern.

    I believe those EPS runs are the source of Bastardi and Siciliano’s comments? You said above you are 100% in Camp EPS but that you don’t agree with those Twitter comments? Now I’m confused….

    1. Well, one of them says the same thing over and over until it happens, which immediately devalues it IMO (the cry-wolf syndrome), and one of them tends to pick a favorite forecast and repeat what they say, making it sound original. Just speaking from experience and observation here. 🙂

      1. Ahhh, I got it, they are hype and wish casters and you don’t value their opinion BUT….. in this particular case you actually agree with them. Did I interpret that correctly? 🙂

        1. I agree with the idea, but I don’t really believe either is genuine. However I think JB’s reference to 2014-2015 is way way over the top.

  26. Another in the upcoming “pattern change” camp….

    Ben Noll
    @BenNollWeather
    7h

    Late January is looking interesting for snow in the Northeast

    [convective forcing is forecast to reemerge in the Western Hemisphere & Africa}

  27. I find it interesting that the radar’s “rain” portion of our overnight system is considerably more impressive than the “snow” portion.

    Just sayin’ is all. 😉

    1. Are you talking about a futurecast projection on a TV station? Or a model run? Whatever falls tonight will be in the form of snow with the possible exception of rain mixed in at the start over Cape Cod and the Islands. Those projections are generally worthless, especially for systems like this one.

      1. I was referring to the radar in general. I always go to the AccuWeather.com site.

        I figured it out. The “rain” section is the closest to the low itself. Correct?

        2. Yes but that’s just due to the conditions where the low is at the time. It’s a tight system and it’s in a milder environment.

    1. There is pretty solid NE movement there, but the system is still going to wrap pretty tightly, hence the small area of enhanced precip, mostly SE.

      1. Harvey said Boston could get 0- to coating or inch . I’ll let you all know it’s been a good call in season so far .

  30. A reminder that the greatest jeopardy of all time on tonight at 8:00 and needs to be recorded separately from regular jeopardy. At least mine did

  32. Thank you, TK.

    Here’s the weird thing – well, not so weird as it’s happened many times before – it’ll get to 65F on Saturday and maybe even warmer, but in March we’ll be lucky to see a single day above 65F. In fact, the same can sometimes be said for April, and even May some years, and occasionally even early to mid June.

    It looks like the cold may come, but not this month. Perhaps we’ll get an extended period of cold and sometimes snowy from February to mid March. After that, the usual wet and raw conditions will prevail for most of the spring, with beautiful teaser days thrown in.

    1. If the EPS and CFS are correct, that will not be the case. We flip to colder the last two weeks of January through February. Then warmer than normal March straight through next October.

  33. Interesting tweet from Judah Cohen, especially considering all the chatter on the internet about a pattern switch today…

    Judah Cohen
    @judah47
    10h

    The polar cap heights (PCHs) plot suggestive of troposphere-stratosphere-troposphere strong #PolarVortex (PV) coupling event with tropospheric precursor this week & strong PV next week. If cycle is completed with #cold PCHs at the surface late Jan/early Feb put a fork in #winter!

    1. Because weather forecasting is an exact science. 😉
      Or they never learn from all the other times they said that and were wrong. 😉

      And even if they were correct in one sense, winter isn’t over. It ends with the same occurrence (vernal equinox) every year. The weather is the weather. Dry, wet, snowy, mild, cold. It’s still winter. But there is a mentality out there too that if we’re not having below normal temps and above normal snow, then it’s not “winter”. That’s a very narrow-minded viewpoint. 🙂

      1. I heard people saying things like that a week after July 4! Whatever happened to living in the here & now? … I’d write more but I need to run out and grab my Easter candy! 😛

    3. It is human nature. Been that way as long as I remember. As my youngest and wisest (she’s most like me) says, if it doesn’t impact you….she says me….why worry

    1. (imagine a nice snowflake emoji here, you know the kind that makes it snow on your phone when you see it…) 😀

  38. The thunderstorms (lots of lightning) around that storm center indicate rapid intensification. Model forecasts for this system were pretty accurate.

    I have noticed a lot of folks around the net acting like this forecast was “a bust”. Once again, a busted forecast is a forecast that fails miserably. It is NOT a storm that does not produce a lot of snow. The term which was originated by meteorologist has been hijacked and is now used incorrectly. 😉 We want our term back! 😛

    Kidding aside, this thing is actually doing what was expected. It may over-perform (up to 4 inches in isolated locations) somewhere around Cape Cod. This is due to the compact but intense nature of the system.

  39. Driving in around 11 just saw snow in Hingham with nothing here in Boston. My wife said it was snowing in pembroke.

    1. Snowing here in Boston albeit melting as it hits the ground. Roof and car tops just wet also. Maybe very slight coating on my front lawn.

  41. About a crusty half inch in Marshfield.

    Believe it started as a bit of light rain, as the bottom part was a frozen layer of icy snow.

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