It has been quite the winter for New England and the latest winter storm in HAMMERING New Hampshire and Maine tonight while it’s winding down further west but for you good folks of Maine, it ain’t over till it’s over and I’m not talking about winter, I’m talking about this storm. Just when you think the snows are winding down, energy continues to pour into the system from the southwest and it looks like it’s going to just keep on going through tonight, through Wednesday and perhaps even into Thursday.

How much snow in total? We’re talking easily 1 foot widely across far northern New York through most of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine and for a large area of Maine, you may have between 12-16, locally 24-28 inches when all is said and done.

Tired of winter? Amazingly, this pattern is nowhere near done yet. More storms and a world of cold air is sitting and waiting to be tapped up in Canada. Thank or blame the ‘off the scale’ negative AO for providing an unusually deep level of cold over central Canada which helps fuel winter storms and bring down cold blasts which are more suited in January.

While the New England system will continue to pound away at Maine, our eyes shift to another storm pushing through the Pacific Northwest which will swing out into the Plains. This, like we saw with the current storm up in New England, will increase the severe weather risk in the Southeast this weekend but with modeling showing a lot of energy being drawn from the Gulf and cold air coming down from Canada, this thing could bring the biggest snows of winter to parts of Iowa and Missouri this weekend.

Here’s the 1000_500 thicknesses & precip off the GFS out at 3 hrs and you can see the amount of energy and moisture continuing to pour into Maine but I want to to see those thicknesses and the amount of cold driving into the Upper Midwest as well as what pushing into the Washington-Oregon coast, that’s our next trouble maker.

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Here are the 850mb temps out at 24 hours and look at the -15 to -20C temps covering much of Illinois and even into northern Indiana. Also notice how far south the 0C line is.

Here’s forecasted SURFACE temperatures according to the GFS by Wednesday morning and notice the 0F line south of the Twin Cities, it’s fairly rare to get subzero lows this late on. Certainly not unheard of by it hasn’t happened all that much over the past 10, even 15 years.

Here is Thursday morning and even colder. Could see near -5 for a low in Minneapolis, ene rarer territory while Chicago eyes single digits, low to mid-teens across Indiana, Ohio Pennsylvania with single digits to near zero across the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The 20F line dives into Tennessee. Folks in Atlanta get ready! You may see mid-20s Thurs morning.

So it gets cold between the system now over New England and the next one coming into the West Coast this weekend.

Here comes the next beast. Notice from this surface chart at 90 hrs (Sat) the low swings south of Denver.. another snowstorm here as winds turn easterly and wraps moisture around from the south. While Denver gets hit by potentially 4-8 inches of snow, check out the moisture over the Tennessee Valley. As the low track pretty far south, this means it’s going to take a big gulp of Gulf heat and moisture. Winds will begin to turn southerly once the low emerges from the southern Rockies, drawing heat  and high dew point air north up into the boundary and area of ‘lift’. We’re going to need to watch the region from east Texas all the way to Georgia with this.

Check this out by 102 hrs. Wow, that looks nasty across the Southeast, a ton of moisture is being lifted north from Arkansas to South Carolina and that has the hallmarks of both a significant flooding rain even and severe outbreak with an incredible amount of convective energy feeding up from the south. With a lot of mid-winter level cold being drawn down from Canada, these two air masses coming together could produce a wild blizzard for Missouri, Iowa and back into the central Plains. This is the type of storm where you’ve got powerful thunderstorms constantly firing and being driven straight into the cold sector and with endless amounts of energy and upward forcing, you may have incredible 2-5 inch snowfall rates per hour with howling 50-70 mph winds.

Here’s by Sunday and just look at how the GFS really winds this thing up. This could be a big severe weather maker for Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia while a ragiong blizzard unfolds on the north and west side. Watch out for the depth of cold streaming down the Plains on the backside of this. It wouldn’t surprise me if the cold which follows this is even deeper than what we’re seeing now driving through the Midwest, incredible stuff!!

This thing will eventually bring yet another snowstorm to West Virginia and Virginia with another teaser for the Baltimore-Washington area by early next week. More on that later!

Finally, here’s the GFS snow projections through 144 hours. This thing has the potential of dumping 20-30 inches of snow on Iowa and or Missouri!

When does this pattern finally break? Right now there is no true end in sight given this…

Wouldn’t surprise me if this is one of the deepest negative AO’s during March. This is the reason the cold is of midwinter strength and storms are as wild as they are.. The cold is almost certain to last into at least early April, perhaps even mid month before this turns around and spring arrives.

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