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Getting nickeled and dimed....(1-18-12)

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Reported by: Jim Teske

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Published: 1/18 5:52 pm

Updated: 1/18 5:55 pm

The weather is quieting down Wednesday evening after a round of strong, damaging winds and a very limited amount of lake effect. Our next focus now shifts to a couple of systems that will try to bring a light snow accumulation to central New York between now and the start of the weekend.

First, we watch an approaching cold front for later Thursday/Thursday night. This is actually the leading edge to a reinforcing shot of cold air that will move over us on Friday. This front doesn’t have a lot of moisture with it but there should at least be a widespread area of light snow that moves over central New York from late in the afternoon into the evening. There is even a chance early in the evening for a quick little burst of snow as the front comes through. If the burst does occur it would last less than half an hour. Right now we are thinking a trace to 2” is possible Thursday night.

Map Courtesy National Centers for Enviromental Prediction.

The next system to impact us is actually a piece of the same system that is now coming ashore in the Pacific Northwest with snow and wind. It quickly travels east across the country and track just to our south of Saturday. One of the ways we look to see the potential for precipitation is by looking at temperatures aloft. A quick change in temperature over a short horizontal distance (or gradient) is a good sign of lift and potentially precipitation. When the temperatures are increasing we call this “warm air advection.” This map shows temperatures at about 5,000 feet on Saturday morning. I’ve highlighted where the greatest change, or gradient, is and that is almost right over central New York.

So given this, it appears our greatest chance for a widespread snow will be Saturday and the models seem to key in on this. Here’s a graphic that shows the precipitation hour by hour through Saturday.

This is not our forecast but strictly right off the NAM computer model. The take away from this is that the greater potential for widespread snow will come late Friday night and Saturday (on the left side of the above graphic). For those keeping track, the computer model says about an inch Thursday night and another inch on Friday morning while close to 5 inches on Saturday.

So it looks like we will get a chance to build up our snow cover again leading up to the weekend which is good news for skiers and snowmobilers. We’ll have more specifics on these separate snow events over the next few days.

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	79°	Wind	Feels Like
		SSE 12 mph	79°

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