Good evening to you from Southern Connecticut Weather!
Steady snow has just about moved out of the state, however, a few snow showers are still possible overnight, especially along the shoreline, so keep an eye out for that if you're out and about at this late hour. In general, snow totals were right in line with the forecast, with the immediate coastline and areas just north and seeing between two and five inches of snow, most of the state seeing between six and ten inches of snow, and areas in the far NW and NE corners of the state seeing between nine and fourteen inches of snow. We also saw some sleet and icing along the shoreline, making for very tricky driving conditions at times. Overall, a relatively well forecast event! A huge thank you to everyone who submitted reports to us during the storm, they are a huge help in giving us ground truth to what we’re seeing on the radar.
Tomorrow will be the warmest day of the forecast period, with highs in the mid 30s expected along with partly sunny skies. This combination of “warm”(We’ll still be below normal, but it’s well above what we’ve been seeing the last several days.) temps and sunny skies will be a rare one over the next several days, so make sure to get out and enjoy it!
Our break from cold will come to an abrupt end on Wednesday as another cold front sweeps in and sends our highs back to the mid 20s, and mostly cloudy skies ahead of our next system will vanquish any hopes of feeling warmed from the sun.
All eyes then turn to Thursday as a clipper system drops out of the Great Lakes towards our area, bringing us a round of light snow Thursday afternoon. Model consensus on this initial clipper impacting us is very high, and thus am comfortable in saying that some accumulating snow is likely for the entire state Thursday afternoon. From the clipper, I expect the highest amounts to be on the shoreline, as they will be closer to the center of the low(which looks to pass under LI), and thus will be able to get into the heavier precipitation, although in general I expect amounts to be light for this portion of the storm. Here's a look at the clipper on the 0z GFS.
Steady snow has just about moved out of the state, however, a few snow showers are still possible overnight, especially along the shoreline, so keep an eye out for that if you're out and about at this late hour. In general, snow totals were right in line with the forecast, with the immediate coastline and areas just north and seeing between two and five inches of snow, most of the state seeing between six and ten inches of snow, and areas in the far NW and NE corners of the state seeing between nine and fourteen inches of snow. We also saw some sleet and icing along the shoreline, making for very tricky driving conditions at times. Overall, a relatively well forecast event! A huge thank you to everyone who submitted reports to us during the storm, they are a huge help in giving us ground truth to what we’re seeing on the radar.
Tomorrow will be the warmest day of the forecast period, with highs in the mid 30s expected along with partly sunny skies. This combination of “warm”(We’ll still be below normal, but it’s well above what we’ve been seeing the last several days.) temps and sunny skies will be a rare one over the next several days, so make sure to get out and enjoy it!
Our break from cold will come to an abrupt end on Wednesday as another cold front sweeps in and sends our highs back to the mid 20s, and mostly cloudy skies ahead of our next system will vanquish any hopes of feeling warmed from the sun.
All eyes then turn to Thursday as a clipper system drops out of the Great Lakes towards our area, bringing us a round of light snow Thursday afternoon. Model consensus on this initial clipper impacting us is very high, and thus am comfortable in saying that some accumulating snow is likely for the entire state Thursday afternoon. From the clipper, I expect the highest amounts to be on the shoreline, as they will be closer to the center of the low(which looks to pass under LI), and thus will be able to get into the heavier precipitation, although in general I expect amounts to be light for this portion of the storm. Here's a look at the clipper on the 0z GFS.
However, what happens next for Thursday night into Friday morning is unclear. All guidance is in agreement on the clipper transferring to a coastal low and rapidly deepening when it does so, spinning up quite the strong storm as a result. However, they disagree on where exactly the low will bomb out, and that will have significant implications as to the sensible weather that impacts our area. The 0z GFS model as of now is the furthest west with the placement of the low, and brings several additional inches of snow to the entire state as a result, with combined totals of 6”+ in eastern areas from the clipper and the coastal. The 12z EURO however did not bomb the low until it was well out to sea, and as a result, the only additional snowfall comes in the form of some snow showers or light snow in eastern areas. The 0z GGEM, NAM, and UKMET are in-between these two extremes, and would bring a couple of additional inches to eastern areas and perhaps just some additional snow showers to western areas.
I’m leaning towards a further east solution mainly because of the 12z models, the Euro was the only one to not jump west and now at 0z the other guidance has begun to trend back towards it, but I’m not ruling out a more significant event yet. Regardless, accumulating snow from the clipper looks likely Thursday afternoon, making for a potentially messy PM commute. We’ll continue to keep an eye on the models, and will update again as we know more.
Here's a look at the MSLP positions of the GFS and the Euro valid for 7 AM Friday morning. Notice how much further east the Euro is compared to the GFS, which as a result leads to the QPF(not shown due to copyright issues) being placed much further east as a result.
I’m leaning towards a further east solution mainly because of the 12z models, the Euro was the only one to not jump west and now at 0z the other guidance has begun to trend back towards it, but I’m not ruling out a more significant event yet. Regardless, accumulating snow from the clipper looks likely Thursday afternoon, making for a potentially messy PM commute. We’ll continue to keep an eye on the models, and will update again as we know more.
Here's a look at the MSLP positions of the GFS and the Euro valid for 7 AM Friday morning. Notice how much further east the Euro is compared to the GFS, which as a result leads to the QPF(not shown due to copyright issues) being placed much further east as a result.
Behind this storm, even colder air moves into the state, with highs not getting out of the teens on Friday and Saturday, along with lows below zero expected state wide on Saturday morning. Another system approaches the area for Sunday, and while at this time the model consensus is for it to pass harmlessly out to sea, we’re keeping an eye on it just to be safe, as some of the models do show it close enough to impact the area with another round of snow. As always, we’ll have updates on this system as needed. Very cold weather looks to continue through the end of the weekend into early next week.
Keep an eye out for another update tomorrow(Tuesday) night with more on Thursdays possible storm along with potentially a first call map depending on confidence, but until then, happy shoveling, stay warm, and thanks for reading Southern Connecticut Weather!
-SA
Keep an eye out for another update tomorrow(Tuesday) night with more on Thursdays possible storm along with potentially a first call map depending on confidence, but until then, happy shoveling, stay warm, and thanks for reading Southern Connecticut Weather!
-SA
