Hope you all had a nice Friday and St. Patrick's Day as those snowpacks melted and the sound of dripping becoming more prevalent. Today we had mostly sunny skies with temperatures making it into the 40s across the state for the most part. A nice change from the chill that has been in the air. As we head through this evening skies will remain mostly clear with temperatures dropping off into the mid 20s at the shore, with upper teens to low 20s inland. Clear and tranquil conditions through early Saturday morning with unseasonably cold conditions continuing. As we head through the day on Saturday, clouds will filter into the state, by mid afternoon to early evening in advance of our next weather maker. There could be some snow showers during Saturday afternoon.
So we have yet another snow maker looking to make waves from Saturday into Sunday. We are in an unseasonably cold pattern and find the northern jet stream dipping in from Canada, and as often times happens, impulses will track along the jet, from Alberta, Canada, hence "Alberta Clipper". This is a pattern we often see in the dead of winter in January and February, but not mid March. Clippers are fast moving system, but often potent dropping a few inches of snow in the matter of a few hours, some clippers will track to our east then strengthen, which looks to be the case for this next event. The only real question is, where will this clipper track? If it tracks further north, the southern and eastern portion of the state could see a moderate snowfall, if it tracks further south, a very minimal impact to areas south of I84. The GFS model shows a moderate snowfall for the state, while models such as the NAM and GGEM show a lesser impact to the state. Our big concern with this storm is an inverted trough feature. Any place where this inverted trough tracks over, could see intense snowfall rates and warning level snows. This could be anywhere in the state, from eastern CT to SWCT, but thinking currently is that this inverted, or norlun trough will miss the state entirely. If this trough does hit though we would see higher snow amounts than forecast in that area so we're keeping a close eye on it on the models and will update tomorrow morning if needed.
Here's our forecast map for this event.
As we said earlier, with the placement of the NORLUN trough, this is a low confidence forecast. If needed, we will update with a new snowmap tomorrow morning. Have a great night everyone! Stick with SCW for the all your Connecticut weather needs!- TW