Weekend snowstorm risk in Northeast hinges on storm track, cold air
A lurking storm for Sunday to Monday has the potential to bring significant snow to a large area of the northeastern United States, including New York City, Boston and Philadelphia.
On today’s Forecast Feed, AccuWeather Meteorologist Bernie Rayno explains why the potential for a major East Coast snowstorm in the coming days remains low.
A storm near the Washington coast in the Pacific Northwest has the potential to bring more accumulating snow to parts of the Northeast later this weekend. The situation is complicated and is not certain to bring snow to the big cities along the Interstate 95 corridor.
The storm will track southward across California Thursday, swing across the Rockies Friday, and then the Central states Saturday.
"There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that would have to come together at the right time for a major storm to unfold and bring heavy snow late this weekend to early next week," AccuWeather Meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said.
"One significant problem we see right out of the chute is the lack of cold air around the time the storm is forecast to develop," AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter added.
Cold air is extremely important for snow to survive the trip to the ground. Most precipitation begins as snow at high altitudes this time of year; if it is cold enough, the snowflakes reach the ground rather than melt beforehand.
Another factor to consider in this case is the storm's track.
If the storm travels well inland of the coast, it will pull too much warm air into the I-95 zone for snow and might even make it too warm for an all-out snowstorm from north and west of I-95 to the Appalachians.
Because this storm could tap into enough cold air and could track just off the coast, it may bring snow to the Northeast.
Another condition AccuWeather meteorologists are pondering is whether there will be a narrow northward extension of the moisture as the storm nears the coast. This Norlun Trough, as it is called, can lead to a few dozen miles-wide zone of heavy snow, under certain conditions. Such a setup is rare but may develop somewhere from the central Appalachians and the upper mid-Atlantic and southern New England coasts from Sunday to Monday.
AccuWeather meteorologists will continue to track the storm and key components in the coming days to refine the forecast for the primary form of precipitation across the Northeast. With every storm, many factors are considered, including how some conditions will change over time.
Prior to the Sunday-Monday storm, there will be multiple rounds of rain, ice and snow from the Upper Midwest to the Northeast this week.
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