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[nynjpaweather]

This is an excerpt from my forecast discussion.  Will keep thoughts on this potential storm here through the week.

Well, first let’s deal with the potentail storm on the ECMWF on Sunday night.  This storm has almost the same set up and development as the storm from last night.  We have a sheared disturbance over the southern branch, just strong enough to bring a lot of moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico, and a stronger disturbance over the northern branch diving through the Great Lakes.  Now, what’s tricky here is that the pattern will be changing for this period.  The whole pattern over North America will become zonal.  This means, that more than likely the strong northern branch will weaken a bit and allow for a more northward track to any southern branch disturbance.  However, with that, there is going to be an issue of boundary layer temperatures due to the southeasterly flow ahead of this entire set up.  Therefore, over the next few days I am going to look at several key factors.

1.  The speed of the clipper over the Great Lakes and interaction with the disturbance over the southern Branch.  Does the clipper transition itself towards the coast over the Carolinas’ or south of Long Island?

2.  What will be the boundary layer conditions ahead of either feature?

3.  What will be the magnitude of the shear produced by the northern branch jet maximum?  Will the southern jet briefly intensify due to the changing Pacific pattern?  Will the southern disturbance become significantly sheared or not?

    There are other questions to answer as well obviously, but those are my three main questions that need to be answered ahead of this event for next weekend.  The GFS curiously produces a significant isentropic lifting event on Saturday night into Sunday before sending the storm from Virginia to the coastal waters of New Jersey and then off the coastal waters of New England.  The ECMWF basically keeps the moisture well south of the Mid Atlantic until a low forms 200 miles off the New Jersey coast and then phases with the clipper over New England.  I believe a solution in between these two model solutions is likely.  An isentropic event as the southern low takes shape over the Gulf Coast through the Mid Atlantic followed by a phasing of the clipper and Gulf Low somewhere along the East coast.  How and when will determine whether a major storm along the East coast, a non-issue over the western Atlantic, or somewhere in between becomes a reality.

[snowfreak188]

njblizzard, on Jan 20 2008, 01:44 PM, said:

what about wind chill...i dont like that sound of this for giants...its too cold for even NE teams...

i hope we can get that storm the one storm we MAY get!