A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY is up for northern Connecticut for tomorrow morning.
Well, this week is going to be a meteorological nail-biter in every sense of the words, with not one but two incredibly complex storm systems heading for us here in Connecticut. Both forecasts are extremely high risk and lie in the near future, so this will be rather difficult indeed. Let's divide this into two sections here.
Storm #1- Tomorrow and Wednesday- A very intense storm system will be moving to our west, the proverbial "inside runner". As of now, it appears that there will be just barely enough warm air in place to negate significant icing, but it's insanely close- something like one or two degrees- so even a tiny forecast error will be absolutely catastrophic to the overall forecast. For now, however, I am going to say that any icing would occur mid morning before changing to plain rain in plenty of time for the afternoon commute home. Let's hope so- this would be fantastic news and could spare a travel headache!
^^Current GFS for tomorrow afternoon, suggesting heavy rain in CT, but only plain rain.
Storm #2- Thursday 2/9- This could be much more impactful than the storm tomorrow, as this one will have no precip issues- it's going to be snow. The question is how much it will pile up- some models say very little, whilst others suggest up to a double-digit snowfall during the day. To add insult to injury, the timing looks like it would basically be all day on Thursday. As we're still a couple days out, there's time to watch. A reasonable worst case scenario is 8-16", but a fair guess would be 2-5" at this time. That said, it's going to be close! The GFS over the last two runs has suggested each of these, which is not helpful for forecasting, and the Euro is somewhere in between with a 4-8" event. Here are the last two GFS model runs...
^^^The worst scenario- a monster sized snowstorm for all of New England, featuring gusty winds and double-digit accumulations. The odds of this occurring right now are roughly 30%.
^^^A less bullish, but still snowy, solution for Thursday. This is a 2-5" snowfall with locally higher amounts, especially in southeastern parts of the state. Also keep in mind that due to the strength of the cold air, this would be a high-ratio snow, so numbers would be a bit higher than what is modeled verbatim.
Plenty to watch this week- I'll have more updates soon!
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