Late weekend coastal storm?Posted Dec02, 2006 at 12:27 AM
That said, it's important to keep an eye on things for possible surprises, and this coming week will offer the season's first solid week of the kind of cold -- not frigid, but certainly winterlike -- that could support ice and snow. The first thing to keep an eye on is the potential development of a coastal low Sunday and Monday. I've included a frame from the GFS model run (click here for larger version of inset frame) depicting the development of such a system (the broad black-line circle inside a blob of green representing precipitation) just off the East Coast in the Sunday overnight-early Monday morning period. As you can see, the model is depicting this storm to be too far east of us ... and mostly rain along the Virginia and Carolinas coast. (The blue-dotted lines very roughty depict where the thickness of cold air is projected to be about right for snow, and as you can see, our part of Virginia is near where the red dotted lines give way to the blue ones). Several computer model runs have handled this storm the same way, as atmospheric energy approaching from the west encounters dry air over us and kicks this storm up too late. But I also remember what the models were showing on a coastal storm just before Thanksgiving ... and then what we ended up with. At first projected to miss most of the coastal storm, we ended up getting a nice slug of rain as it developed and moved farther west than expected. So keeping that in mind in our very recent past, this is still worth keeping an eye on ... though this low probably won't be nearly as strong as that one was, won't be subject to the same jet stream situation in becoming "cut off," and even if it does something surprising, we'll still be close to the rain-snow fence, or the snow-dry air fence, this far west. I expect nothing. |
About this blog
Kevin Myatt works on the copy desk for The Roanoke Times and is its principal weather geek, writing a weekly weather column and advising the newsroom on weather topics. He helps guide students on a storm chasing trip to the central U.S. each May and was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States." .....Advertisement.....
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