Snow this week?

For those who are wondering about this week's weather in Ithaca, NY, I'll have a post up tonight.

A brief summary is that it will be cold and raw this week as a powerful midlatitude storm scoots off to the NE and cold high pressure builds in behind it. The storm is close enough to provide some showers and another storm could approach this week. Both have the potential to give us a couple of flakes. Nothing much, but a reminder that winter is here.

Warmish week is here.

Yes, it's warm but it probably wont last. It is that time of the Earth's year long orbit when the northern hemisphere is being rotated away from the warm ball of plasma we call the sun. So...

That being said, short term and long term trends are very different things. If Ned Stark were to walk outside today on the East Coast, he'd be like this:

It is pretty warm outside. That's due to an unusually strong high pressure that is now sliding off the SE coast. Its anticyclonic (clockwise) flow is funneling warm air up the eastern seaboard.

These temperature anomalies, however strong, will be short lived. We should go back to normal or even below normal temperatures this coming weekend.Winter is coming or rather the other way around; we are hurtling towards it. The winter solstice is the point of the orbit where the northern hemisphere is tilted the most away from the sun. Hopefully we can make the most of whatever cold we get. Winter forecasts should be coming soon. Brace yourselves...

Last Hurrah?

7:30 PM 3/2/2016 Wednesday Update:
Well the GFS caved. It ticked south for the 12z and 18z runs. Nearly every other model ticked north. It looks like we will be just north of the heavier precip. 1-3 inches of snow is expected overnight into early Friday morning, with all of it melting by nightfall. A delay is possible. Closing unlikely unless we get more snow. There is still a bit of upside. The storm will be bombing off the coast so exact track is going to be unpredictable. A 25 mile shift north/expansion of the precip shield would put us in the game for 3-6 inches, not a bad way to close out the winter. I'll keep you updated.

Original Text 
Spring is approaching but we have one last chance at some snow Thursday night into Friday morning. A potent little shortwave will approach the area tomorrow. However, the storm that went by this morning will probably shred the shortwave, killing the primary low. A coastal low will form to the south-too far south to give us any precip of consequence . We are hoping for the front end moisture associated with the primary low, which probably will not amount to much. A trace to and inch of wet snow is expected. Most models are in agreement on taking the coastal too far south.  There is, however, a bit of upside to the situation.

Euro has the 850 low farther south, in line with most of the models

 

The GFS has the 850 low 100 miles NW

The GFS is different, keeping the shortwave more organized, and organizing up the to-be coastal over the SE US much earlier as a result. We get 3-6 inches in that situation. This is probably the most that we could expect to fall. As stated before, the GFS is an outlier and probably should be discounted. We will be looking at the 12z model suite too see if the other models hold and if the GFS stays with its solution. The snow should liquefy under the sunangle of early march by Friday afternoon. Currently, I anticipate a school delay at most. After this"storm", we have a chance at some snow showers. Yay Snow TV. After that, we go straight into spring weather as California gets some much-needed rain.