Models on NE Snowstorm, Unique Effects

UPDATE 1 PM: Here's our new storm map. I would expect that wet snow or snow showers could occur outside of the white areas where we have shown accumulating snow. You can read more of our thoughts in this news story.

The models have been surprisingly consistent on parts of the Appalachians getting heavy wet snow this weekend. Here are a couple of examples from last night:

The coverage is probably overdone (in the case of the GFS, the data pixels that have been smoothed to make this image are large - you could only fit one or two into New Jersey for example), but I would guess that this much agreement with only a few days to go means this: The mountain tops in the Northeast (perhaps southern Appalachians as well) will get some accumulating snow Friday into the weekend. The amounts are probably overdone as well, and much of the white and light blue areas may only see flurries or wet flakes, maybe only at higher elevations.

What elevations will get significant snow? AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi [BIO] (PRO USERS READ NOW | 30-DAY FREE TRIAL) said in his blog this morning:

The last point that Joe brings up is a good one -- if you're planning to see fall foliage at these elevations this week, you'd be best to do it before Friday. And when he says "damaging event" he means that there could be a lot of power outages and trees down in those areas, which are not used to getting snow while the leaves are on the trees. This reminds me of the October 2002 snow event here in Central PA, though it was closer to Halloween so a lot of leaves had naturally fallen already. Right now, we have "moderate" leaf drop at best according to the Foliage Network. It may end up that the most damaged area ends up being somewhere between the highest peaks (which have lost some of their leaves) and the rain/snow line at a lower elevation.

Of course, things can change and as Elliot says in his blog this morning, "At this point, it's a lot of if, if and if." Both Elliot and Henry are going into more detail on this storm than I have time to do here... we did put out a map on this storm yesterday but I won't show it here as it is out of date and we will update it later today.