A cold front swinging through central New York late this afternoon brought a change to the weather in central New York. Already, cooler and cooler air is surging in behind the front so our rain showers will turn to snow showers overnight. The air aloft is not ideal for lake effect but a strong west wind being forced up and over the Tug Hill should squeeze out a modest amount of snow. There could be some spots there that end up with a half a foot of snow by Tuesday morning. Outside the Tug Hill any accumulation of snow tonight will be light, say an inch or less.
The wind will also be a concern across central New York. The region will be on the southern edge over a strong storm that impacted the Plains on Sunday and is now moving into southern Canada. Counterclockwise winds around this storm will be gusty over a large area. Even though we will be well south of this storm there could still be gusts tonight above 40 mph, especially north of Syracuse. This wind will slowly ease Tuesday afternoon as the low pulls away from us.
By Wednesday and Thursday our weather will quiet down. There will certainly be lighter winds and our weather will be generally dry as we are between systems. One of those systems, an area of low pressure, will miss us to the south later Wednesday into Wednesday night. Although it won’t be as strong as last weekends Blizzard, Wednesday’s low could still bring accumulating snow to parts of the Mid Atlantic and New England.
By Friday, there are indications a cold front may bring a threat for snow showers to the region. This front looks like it will signal a change to much colder weather for the weekend with high temperatures only in the 20s. We have a fairly high confidence in this happening. What is still up in the air is whether we will get a winter storm to form along the East Coast during the weekend and whether it would impact us here in central New York. There has been some disagreement from our computer models about how this might unfold over the past few days. With this uncertainty, you’ll want to check back with us if you have weekend plans.
