Late Season Storm

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Here is the latest on the late season snow event tomorrow.

Not a whole lot has changed since this morning. The cold front is spreading areas of rain across the region this afternoon. This front extends all the way into the southeast and back towards Louisiana and Texas. An area of low pressure is developing across the Deep South and will trigger a large severe weather out break tomorrow. The Storm Prediction Center has a large moderate risk out for that:


The front that is moving through today will stall out to our east. Meanwhile, that low will fly up the front to a position near New York City by mid afternoon tomorrow. There will be just enough cold air being pulled into the storm that it should be all snow for the areas in blue on this map I created:


The low will be moving pretty quickly up the stalled front and the ground is warm, so accumulations shouldn't be huge. The change over to snow will occur first in the higher elevations, and it will remain colder there as well, so expect the highest totals there. The rest of Central New York should get a moderate snow, but not enough to cause too many problem. It will be windy as well though, so use caution traveling tomorrow as the wind and snow will create poor visibilities. Here is my snowfall map for the entire storm, which should wind down pretty quickly tomorrow afternoon.


Where does this storm rank with some other 'out of season' storms? Its actually not very impressive. In 2007, our area was hit by almost 2 feet (18" is what I measured) on April 16-17th. In early October 2006, a monster lake effect event pounded Buffalo, causing millions of dollars worth of damage since the heavy wet snow stuck to the leaves on trees and brought them down. So this is more just a nuisance storm than anything. One commonality between the three storms is the lack of willingness on the part of the media to be bold and predict snow. Granted, the models are all over the place with this, as can be expected. But I feel really confident about this storm, as I did the April 2007 storm.

I will update again late tonight. I have a test in Tropical Meteorology (so ironic, isn't it?) tomorrow, so I won't be able to update again until 10 or 11. Stay tuned though!