Forecaster's Discussion for 12/7/2014

Good afternoon from Southern Connecticut Weather!

After a day of heavy rains, raw conditions, and even some frozen precipitation in northern Connecticut, we are now dealing with gusty winds making the already cold temperatures feel colder. While temperatures outside our frigid, bright sunshine and dry conditions are abundant across the state. Expect dry conditions and mostly clear skies to continue through the evening with temperatures across the state expected to drop through the teens as we approach the midnight hour with winds beginning to taper off around this time as well, still, wind chill values could be as low as the single digits tonight, so bundle up if you are heading out.

Looking toward the start of your week, most of Monday looks to be dry and cold, with temperatures struggling to make it into the 30s statewide, there could still be some breezy conditions, especially early, make sure to bundle up the kids as they head to the bus stop tomorrow morning. Clouds begin to move in later on Monday in advance what could be a strong and very difficult to forecast storm which looks to dominate most of the middle of the week. Now this is when the forecast gets very tricky....

Model consensus on track, intensity, and high placement is pretty much non-existent. As most of you know, track of the low pressure system is the most important factor in determining everything from how much precipitation we are going to get, what kind of precipitation we get (whether it's wet or white), how windy it will be, and even determining whether there will be coastal flooding. Two models the US model GFS, and the Canadian GGEM show a storm basically tracking from the mid Atlantic, over the top of Connecticut or Rhode Island. In this scenario the state basically spared the worst and most of the state flips from snow to sleet to plain rain, and as the low tracks over Connecticut and even Rhode Island, coastal flooding, wind and precipitation would be at a minimum with a lull or even a stoppage in rain before some wrap around precipitation moves in, in the form of some light rain and possibly snow in the hills.

Then we have the very trusty ECMWF, or EURO, for short, which tracks the low quite close to the coast,  also I see a start as some frozen precipitation all the way to the shore late Monday night and Tuesday before changing to plain rain from the shore to central Connecticut around sunrise while staying mainly or all snow in the Litchfield Hills. In the scenario, the Litchfield Hills get buried with snow, while the rest of the state endures very heavy rain which would cause street flooding, gusty winds, and coastal flooding all along the shore. In all cases, this is a long duration event with impacts being felt from late Monday all the way through late Wednesday night and possibly Thursday morning.

 My take on all of this is that there will be coastal flooding and high winds, especially Tuesday through Wednesday, but I am not exactly confident enough to issue a precipitation forecast at this point. One thing I am quite certain of, is that precipitation will start as frozen all the way to the shore, and could cause some issues, especially on Tuesday morning.  What I am not certain of is how much snow and frozen precipitation the state will get and the duration of said frozen precipitation. Then there is a little issues of there being some possible wrap around snows or frozen precipitation as the low exits the region. All of this will need to be fine tuned in the next 12-24 hours.

Yesterday on the Facebook page I had a said there would be the extended forecast, but I am cancelling that forecast until at least tomorrow night, because a solid chunk of said forecast relies on getting a better understand of the early-mid week storm. My apologies.

Have a good rest of your Sunday afternoon and evening, and stay warm! Much more on the mid week storm possibly as early as this evening with more and more model data coming in. Stay tuned!- Tim