First winter thread of the season (bac beat me to the one for tomorrow, lol). Meant to start this yesterday, but I've been a little busy with work and my wife. She's ok and going to be ok, but she went into the hospital for viral meningitis yesterday - 3rd time, which is very unusual; the bacterial version is much more dangerous, although the viral version will knock someone out for a week. Hopefully she'll get to go home tomorrow evening and rest up all week (they keep you in the hospital as a precaution, in case the initial culture for the bacterial version is incorrect, which happens about 1% of the time - the full culture takes 48 hours).
Anyway, as opposed to last December, which shattered all records for warmest December on record, this December is looking to be colder than normal, with numerous chances at snow/precip, especially over the next week to 10 days. While areas well to the NW (Poconos, Sussex County and Hudson Valley) have already seen 6-10” of snow this winter, most folks in the Philly-NYC corridor have maybe seen just a few flakes (we did get that surprise 1/2” of sleet/snow at my house and obviously at the PSU game on 11/19; parts of NW NJ got 3-6" for that one). I know most folks aren't snow nuts like I am, but the plus side, even for snow grinches, is that some holiday season snow is more likely than usual this year.
So, the first chance at some measurable snowfall is this Sunday night into Monday morning, from a “southwest flow event” with an approaching low from the west bringing overrunning moisture to the cold air we’ll have in place. There's obviously a thread on that already, although this looks like a classic snow to rain scenario for most, with little impact along or near I-95 (and from there to the Shore), although north of 78 and especially north of 80, this could be a significant event with 1-4" of snow (the higher amounts N and W) and possibly up to 0.1" of freezing rain on top of the snow, before a changeover to rain, making for a wintry commute in those locations on Monday morning.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...ernoon-into-monday.115073/page-2#post-2513441
Beyond this event, there are a couple more opportunities next week for snow/precip, although it’s definitely too far out to know how much snow and/or rain we're going to get on any particular day, The next chance for snow or is then Wednesday night into Thursday and then there’s another shot of a snow to ice to rain event next weekend. The point isn’t to predict snow that far out, but to highlight that the pattern is colder and wetter than normal, meaning snow is more likely than usual, especially for early/mid-December when we don’t usually get much snow, as meteorological winter (Dec-Jan-Feb) has just begun and temps typically aren’t that cold yet (takes a long time to cool the oceans).
One thing that’s certain: it's going to be relatively cold the next several days and then it looks like it’s going to get anomalously cold by late next week, with highs in the 20s looking likely. For comparsion, the average right now for NYC is still highs in the mid-40s and lows near 30F - last night was NYC's first sub-freezing night since last April (urban heat island effect - been below freezing everywhere else). Also, some serious lake effect snow winding down right now - will be snow measured in feet in the favored locations for the wind direction. If you like to keep up to date on these things, some of the usual links are below…
http://www.weather.gov/phi/
https://www.americanwx.com/bb/forum/11-new-york-city-metro/
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=wxriskcom
Finally, I have a lot of people ask me what I think is going to happen for the winter. For what it's worth, aside from not being an actual meteorologist (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express, once), I personally don't put much stock in anything beyond a week for specific weather and beyond 2-3 weeks for trends. Deterministic models used to forecast actual weather conditions in the future, based on current conditions and actual meteorology/physics, become useless after about 8-10 days, as the "cone of uncertainty" becomes huge, due to the chaotic nature of weather (the butterfly effect).
The people who forecast beyond 2 weeks utilize analog-based "forecasting," where one compares the current state, globally, with states that were similar with respect to various global/regional indices (like El Nino, the Arctic Oscillation, the PDO, EPO, NAO, SO, etc.) in past years and then use essentially pattern recognition skills to find the best "match" - often the closest matches had similar evolutions from the current state through subsequent weeks or even months, so they then will "predict" that we'll have similar outcomes this in the current month/season.
The problem is this technique is fraught with errors and only some to most of the "matches" agree with each other, so it becomes a probabilistic analog-based forecast and I've yet to see anyone do this well yet (including the Farmer's Almanac) with the possible exception of Dr. Grey's seasonal tropical activity forecast, where he's been reasonably "accurate" (i.e., predicting above, below or average activity at maybe a 60% clip, as opposed to random guessing, which would be 33% accurate with 3 choices), but nowhere near as accurate as, say, a 5-day deterministic weather forecast. And keep in mind, for those who like to lambaste weather forecasts, the weather forecasts today are as accurate 5 days out as they were 3 days out 25 years ago – that’s an impressive improvement in prediction accuracy.
Anyway, as opposed to last December, which shattered all records for warmest December on record, this December is looking to be colder than normal, with numerous chances at snow/precip, especially over the next week to 10 days. While areas well to the NW (Poconos, Sussex County and Hudson Valley) have already seen 6-10” of snow this winter, most folks in the Philly-NYC corridor have maybe seen just a few flakes (we did get that surprise 1/2” of sleet/snow at my house and obviously at the PSU game on 11/19; parts of NW NJ got 3-6" for that one). I know most folks aren't snow nuts like I am, but the plus side, even for snow grinches, is that some holiday season snow is more likely than usual this year.
So, the first chance at some measurable snowfall is this Sunday night into Monday morning, from a “southwest flow event” with an approaching low from the west bringing overrunning moisture to the cold air we’ll have in place. There's obviously a thread on that already, although this looks like a classic snow to rain scenario for most, with little impact along or near I-95 (and from there to the Shore), although north of 78 and especially north of 80, this could be a significant event with 1-4" of snow (the higher amounts N and W) and possibly up to 0.1" of freezing rain on top of the snow, before a changeover to rain, making for a wintry commute in those locations on Monday morning.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...ernoon-into-monday.115073/page-2#post-2513441
Beyond this event, there are a couple more opportunities next week for snow/precip, although it’s definitely too far out to know how much snow and/or rain we're going to get on any particular day, The next chance for snow or is then Wednesday night into Thursday and then there’s another shot of a snow to ice to rain event next weekend. The point isn’t to predict snow that far out, but to highlight that the pattern is colder and wetter than normal, meaning snow is more likely than usual, especially for early/mid-December when we don’t usually get much snow, as meteorological winter (Dec-Jan-Feb) has just begun and temps typically aren’t that cold yet (takes a long time to cool the oceans).
One thing that’s certain: it's going to be relatively cold the next several days and then it looks like it’s going to get anomalously cold by late next week, with highs in the 20s looking likely. For comparsion, the average right now for NYC is still highs in the mid-40s and lows near 30F - last night was NYC's first sub-freezing night since last April (urban heat island effect - been below freezing everywhere else). Also, some serious lake effect snow winding down right now - will be snow measured in feet in the favored locations for the wind direction. If you like to keep up to date on these things, some of the usual links are below…
http://www.weather.gov/phi/
https://www.americanwx.com/bb/forum/11-new-york-city-metro/
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=wxriskcom
Finally, I have a lot of people ask me what I think is going to happen for the winter. For what it's worth, aside from not being an actual meteorologist (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express, once), I personally don't put much stock in anything beyond a week for specific weather and beyond 2-3 weeks for trends. Deterministic models used to forecast actual weather conditions in the future, based on current conditions and actual meteorology/physics, become useless after about 8-10 days, as the "cone of uncertainty" becomes huge, due to the chaotic nature of weather (the butterfly effect).
The people who forecast beyond 2 weeks utilize analog-based "forecasting," where one compares the current state, globally, with states that were similar with respect to various global/regional indices (like El Nino, the Arctic Oscillation, the PDO, EPO, NAO, SO, etc.) in past years and then use essentially pattern recognition skills to find the best "match" - often the closest matches had similar evolutions from the current state through subsequent weeks or even months, so they then will "predict" that we'll have similar outcomes this in the current month/season.
The problem is this technique is fraught with errors and only some to most of the "matches" agree with each other, so it becomes a probabilistic analog-based forecast and I've yet to see anyone do this well yet (including the Farmer's Almanac) with the possible exception of Dr. Grey's seasonal tropical activity forecast, where he's been reasonably "accurate" (i.e., predicting above, below or average activity at maybe a 60% clip, as opposed to random guessing, which would be 33% accurate with 3 choices), but nowhere near as accurate as, say, a 5-day deterministic weather forecast. And keep in mind, for those who like to lambaste weather forecasts, the weather forecasts today are as accurate 5 days out as they were 3 days out 25 years ago – that’s an impressive improvement in prediction accuracy.
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