Winter Analysis | Mark G | 6:45a Feb 17, 2012
We know its snow that's coming, but the totals are uncertain
This has been one of those storms where all the ingredients needed for a classic east coast snow storm are not perfectly in place-if that would be the case, forecasting east coast snow storms would be easy, but maybe the man upstairs wants us to stay humbled abut what we know and dont know about weather. Anyhow, 2 models that have been pretty on par this winter w/ storms are calling for snow for Maryland, but while they may differ on snow amounts, they do both seem to indicate that we probably will be starting off this storm as snow especially from DC/BAlt on south and east. Do you remember one of the variables i mentioned about time of day the storm begins playing a factor? Well, looks like the storm may not really start to get going until late Sunday morning-which could mean warmer temps espec near the Chesapeake, Southern Maryland and eastern Shore where the water influence will play a part since water temps are warmer than normal. But the hope is (if you like snow) that as the storm passes to our south and east, the cold air will be able to get in and interact with the storm changing the rain south and east to all snow all the way to the coast. B/c of that , I want to wait until the afternoon to give specific accumulations for specific areas of Maryland. The NAM model from last night above indicates that a swath of 8-12 inches could fall south of DC in Charles and St Mary's County, but I'm little concerned about that being true since we could be rain before the changeover for a while in those areas lowering those accumulations.
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| The NAM Snow Depth Forecast Map |
Here is the GFS model forecasting lower accumulations-maybe this is factoring in that we could start off as rain awhile before the changeover, for instance Southern maryland looks like in this forecast model to be getting 3-6 inches. As you can see, the models are forecasting much less snow for areas above DC and Annapolis-more to come this afternoon.
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| GFS Forecast |
