What You Need to Know About the Boxing Day Blizzard
Yes, Virginia there is a Post-Christmas (Boxing Day??) Blizzard. I haven't said much about it, not just because I'm in a sugar haze from too many Christmas cookies and too much Pepsi (cause I am) but because AccuWeather.com staff (and especially Henry's Facebook Fan Page as well as Joe Bastardi on Facebook) are doing an excellent job covering the storm. Here's what you need to know:
1. This is going to be a big storm, with heavy snow (Joe Bastardi says up to two feet, WRF estimate shown below), high winds, high snow drifts (Henry says up to 10 feet!), and low pressure. Roads will close and travel will be nearly impossible over much of the I-95 corridor in the northeast quadrant of the country. People trying to come home for Christmas will be stranded, and you'll see these stories on TV all week.
2. Pressure will be unusually low, but probably not quite record breaking, with this storm. The lowest pressure shown by a model that I've seen is the 4-KM WRF which shows sub-28.50" offshore and sub-28.60" on Cape Cod. The record low pressure for Nantucket, Massachusetts is 28.18".
3. Check out my East Coast Webcams page to watch the storm. From Virginia northward, especially on the coast, it's gonna be awesome.
4. If I see interesting stats from the storm, I'll transmit them to my Twitter Feed and Facebook Page (link below).
5. The models did a terrible job of predicting this storm, and didn't get it together until yesterday (24 hours out!) Something is wrong with the models this month. I am going to encourage my teammates and AccuWeather.com to get to the bottom of this.
6. If you get photos or video of the extreme weather, please upload them to our AccuWeather.com Facebook page, where you can also post your observations of the storm. We'll use this information in our news stories.
