12/23- STORM WARNING!

Good Tuesday all-

Well, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and that means that today is the last day before Christmas Vacation for most!! Unfortunately, you'll only be seeing clouds outside until as late as late Christmas afternoon. Today is going to be rather wet, but it's nothing compared to what we'll experience tomorrow! I'd expect 2-3" rainfall totals widespread tomorrow, and the rain will last until around mid-day on Christmas Morning. Beyond that, fortunately, things look nice until Sunday...but that could be a bit interesting, as you'll see below here.

Anyway, on to late Sunday and early Monday. A cold front will be moving through the region, and a low pressure system will develop along it. The key questions here are simple- 1. How strong will it be and 2. If it's strong enough, where will it track? Since the answer to both of these questions do not appear to favor a significant snowfall for the moment, I'll hold off on issuing a storm watch HOWEVER, I wouldn't be surprised if I had to issue one as soon as tonight. This would be from about noon Sunday to noon Monday. The worst case scenario here would be a major snowstorm, but I'd only give that around a 15-20% chance at the moment, less than the 25% chance I require for a storm watch.


Today in weather history- December 23, 1994- A monster storm develops along the East Coast and strikes New York City, producing brutal conditions in our region. As much as 4 inches of rain fall, and winds gust to over 70 mph!!! There remains debate to this day as to whether this storm really was just a nor'easter...there is certainly an argument to be made that the storm was actually tropical enough to be called a hurricane even upon landfall in New York. In fact, modern data suggests it probably was, since the sole criteria used to determine the fact that it wasn't a tropical cyclone was that the size of the wind radius (the distance from the center the winds were found) was 150 miles, which is big, granted, but Sandy had a wind radius of over 1,100 miles. Thus, it probably was a hurricane upon landfall in New York. Had it been named, it would have been Hurricane Helene.