As written about late last week, we have yet another complex winter storm situation setting up Northeast with not one but two systems to contend with. While the front running or lead storm departs the Mississippi Valley and heads towards New Jersey, it’s as this moisture (fed north from the Gulf) collides with southbound cold, arctic air across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, we’ll see a strip of moderate to heavy snow break out from West Virginia, NW Virginia, western Maryland through Pennsylvania, North Jersey into New York City and up to Boston. There will be a widespread area of 1-3 inches but within that, I expect 3-6 inches, locally 8 perhaps over the mountains of West Virginia, NW Virginia and Garrett County, Maryland. The Big Cities will see a coating to 3 inches from Philadelphia to Boston with large variance. This will be probably be a nonevent for DC and even Baltimore.

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3-6 Inch Swath Of Snow For North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin Tonight Through Monday

However, before I look further at the New England situation as the two storms close in on one another to form a new coastal low, the biggest feature on the map is currently sliding across North Dakota right now will cross Minnesota into Wisconsin tonight through Monday. Despite no Gulf connection, I expect a pretty decent snowstorm out of this with a swath of 3-6 inches from eastern Montana all the way to central Michigan over the next 30 hours with a band within of 6-12 inches, that 6-12 is likely to encorporate Bismarck, Fargo and points not too far north of Minneapolis-St Paul. I think the Twin Cities gets about 2-4 inches.

The big aspect will be wind. Gust of 40 to 50+ mph will cover a large area so expect significant blowing and drifting on the backside of the low. Blizzard conditions are likely over the E Dakotas and W Minn.

Here’s the GFS snow projections through the next 30 hours. Note the swath of heavy snow across the Northern Tier and the decent snow totals over the Interio Mid-Atlantic extending up through Pennsylvania with 1-3 inches for the Big Cities.

Mid-January Level Cold This Morning Over North Dakota, Minnesota, Worse To Come!

I also want to talk quickly about the cold from this morning. In the wake of the clipper system, potent arctic air was driven south, check out these numbers from this morning. It got down to 29 below zero in Embarrass, MN and 23 below zero up in Grand Forks, ND, boy, this would be a pretty cold night even in January never mind the morning of March 17th.

Now, while this is cold, look at across this same area once this storm system clears east over the next 36 hours because there is even COLDER air heading into the Northern Plains and Midwest for Monday night onwards. How cold? I think -30s for parts of North Dakota and northern Minnesota, -0s for Minneapolis even potentially Madison, WI and single digits for Chicago. This could well be record breaking given how late this is hitting. Remember what I said way back last week? Given the depth of negative AO which is keeping central Canada way colder than normal, look out for a major blast of late season arctic air following a late weekend/early week storm across the Northern Tier.

Daytime temperatures will struggle to even make the teens across North Dakota and northern Minnesota during Tuesday and Wednesday and both nights (Mon & Tues nights) look equally as cold and it really stays cold right through the week.

Check out these 850 temperatures on the backside of the low..

36 hrs

Note the pinks over central Canada. Those are 5,000ft temps of -20 to -25 with darker pinks of -30 or below. Amazing to see this intensity of cold so late on in the season. You can see the -15 to -20 air sweeping into the Upper Midwest Tuesday morning as the storm heads east.

54 hrs

By Wednesday morning that area of -15 to -20 spreads out, covering more of ND, MN and even N Wisc with even a few pockets of pink showing too.

Now, the complicating aspect comes into play later Monday into Tuesday for the Northeast. As the Plains low weakens heading through the Lakes while the lead low weakens also towards the coast. The energy of the two merge to produce a new coastal low, sound familiar?

This situation will pump plenty of moisture but also the 0 line at 850 up through the Mid-Atlantic and up the coast of New England and so while it’s a rain event through the Big Cities Monday night through Tuesday, from points west of Boston up into New England and the interior Northeast, a significant snow event is on the way. Even in central Massachusetts including the hard hit Worchester area which saw back to back 20 inches snows, it looks like they start off with snow, perhaps 2-4, locally 6 inches before a changeover to rain but head north into southern and central Vermont, New Hampshire and away from the immediate coast of Maine and this is pretty much an all snow event and this could be quite a decent sized storm.

There will be 12+ inches perhaps as far west as the Adirondacks of New York extending east through central Vermont, New Hampshire and western Maine, 6-12 for much of Maine, southern VT, NH and this may extend all the way to the mid-Hudson Valley, down to Albany and even into north-central PA.

Here’s the GFS snow chart for 60 hrs through Wed.

Some areas of interior New England could get nearly 2 feet from this I recon. You notice the coating to an inch over much of western and NW Jersey, clipping the north burbs of NYC and perhaps Boston but here it’s mostly rain but head west of the cities and you pick up a few inches.

Notice the tongue of warm air heading up the New England coast on the GFS 850 chart above.

More later!

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Tags: march cold blast, march cold outbreak, Northeast snowstorm, northeast storm, northern plains snowstorm and cold, snowstorm