Lots of talk next about a snowstorm for next weekend! Is there any merit to it?
Well, let’s take a look at why we didn’t get a significant snowstorm last weekend.
Normally, a strong NAO- and Newfoundland Maritime storm is a good harbinger for a big eastern snowstorm. But in this case, I believe the powerhouse Polar Vortex (PV) in south-central Canada just become too much of a pig and shunted the coastal storms out to sea:
In fact the Polar Vortex was so strong, we had a brief surge of milder air ahead of it to start the weekend.
You can also see the two coastal storm “misses” we had last weekend:
Saturday:
Sunday Night:
The polar vortex is swinging through here now, dumping its Arctic surge upon us. If we can’t get a big snow, it’s good to get a strong cold wave to add ice to the lakes night and day:
The Weekend:
The ECMWF ensembles show that the deck has been re-shuffled by Friday: By this time, the old Polar Vortex has been absorbed into a huge Maritime storm off Greenland and a new Polar Vortex (PV) has taken shape over northern Canada. The high latitude blocking NAO- has been greatly weakened:
This might be significant because the weakening of an established high latitude blocking pattern can allow storms to hug the coast more tightly instead of getting shunted out to sea.
As of midday Monday, most of the models depict the possible weekend storm missing us or having us on the outskirts. That could very well be true. But it will be interesting to see whether the models start trending further north/west with the storm track as this week goes on.
Bottom line:
It appear there will be a significant eastern snowstorm next weekend. It’s just a question of whether the storm can take it to the house and deliver the goods for us.
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
