Winter's restart or Winter 2.0 (1-20-13)
Boy, we have a very interesting three or four days in store for us here in central New York. Certainly we have cold to contend with. We’ve been talking about it for the past week and it will be the coldest stretch of weather in these parts since February 2007 as there will be several days with highs in the teens. We are now starting to see the lake effect potential come into better focus as some of our short term models (that do a better job of handling lake effect) show the small scale details.What I’ve seen so far points to our winds becoming more northwesterly this afternoon and staying this way tonight. This will likely bring some lake effect snow down into the Syracuse area mid to late afternoon. Don’t be surprised if this initial batch of lake effect makes a clean sweep through Syracuse then reforms tonight close to us. The air aloft by then will be very cold (-18 c at 5,000 ft) and we are likely going to get some upwind help from Georgian Bay for a while which will enhance the snow. The target zone for this heavier lake effect snow tonight is parts of Wayne, northern Cayuga, southern Oswego, northern Madison and northern Onondaga counties. When I say northern Onondaga county I would say that Baldwinsville -Cicero corridor stands the best chance of the heavier snow, perhaps even close to downtown Syracuse for a time. I see Julia has a swath of 2-4” of snow southeast today by this evening. It looks like a more focused area will see more snow tonight with some spots in the counties I mentioned above ending up with a foot of snow from late this afternoon through sunrise Monday. If you want to know how much your town might get tonight check back later today as Julia will post an updated snowfall map for tonight.The first round of lake effect will wind down tomorrow morning as the low level wind flow gets disrupted. The reason for this is some energy in the upper atmosphere moving through as it heads to the coast late Monday/Monday night. The feature has become stronger looking over the past few days, now to the point where the models are now showing and area of low pressure down at the ground tracking through central New York Monday night. What does this means for us? While the lake effect winds down tomorrow, I think we will have to contend with a widespread snow late tomorrow and tomorrow night with, at first glance, generally 2-4” There may be a narrow area that ends up with a bit more than that but we are too far out in time to try pinpoint that small area of heavier snow.
Once that low moves out to sea, the cold air gets reinforced over us and our wind will get realigned out of the west-northwest. That means Tuesday and Tuesday night there will likely be a renewed area of lake effect snow close to or just north of Syracuse.
We are looking toward a quiet period later Wednesday into Thursday but then another area of low pressure will track east from the Ohio Valley and move south of central New York on Friday. While not a big storm, this low could bring us all a moderate snow to end the week followed by some more lake effect snow over next weekend.
So we haven’t had much winter yet but we we are going to get a spurt of snow with cold weather over the next week that is going to make a lot of skiers and snowmobilers happy. How much total snow will a particular town or city in central New York over the next week is hard to say at this point since a lot of it is at the whims of lake effect.
Copyright 2013 9wsyr.com Nexstar Broadcasting, All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
