Hi-Res Model on Complex Northeast Winter Storm

The storm systems that will affect the Northeast over the next two days are making for a difficult forecast, if only due to their complexity. On the radar from our Premium website this morning you will see four separate areas of precipitation that will have an effect on the outcome:

For what it's worth, here's last night's run of the Hi-Res 4-KM WRF computer forecast model simulated radar from our Pro site. I love looking at this model because of the high level of detail available, but like all models, it can be wrong. I hope that in the future when we compare the common models of today, they will all look like this:

As you can see from this animation, any slight deviation in the track of the storm will cause a big change in the big cities, as heavy snow is located right next door to ice, and how much ice you may receive after the snow will affect final accumulations by compacting it (not meteorologically, but observationally people will see less snow).

Here at AccuWeather.com, we just had our morning meeting where the news meets the meteorology. We are busy updating this story with the latest information and tweaking the areas of precipitation on the map.

For further updates, check out AccuWeather.com Facebook, the Henry Margusity Fan Club there, and the Jan. 18-19 storm thread in the AccuWeather.com Forums.