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Friday Night Into Saturday High Wind OBS And Discussion


bluewave

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I've seen numerous cases in which warm fronts blow by our area in March/April but get hung up to our south in May/June (in the same spring). Late winter / early spring we generally have stronger surface cyclones, which obviously help tremendously w/ getting warm air advection very far north. Later in the spring, we often have boundaries with weaker lows attached to them, as the natural progression into summer occurs of less intense mid latitude jet stream and lessening baroclinicity.

Given the pattern we're in and today's temperatures, I'd be surprised if most of us aren't in the warm sector tomorrow. 12z GFS indicates the front should easily be through NYC by 21z tomorrow.

I'm really not so sure this is going to blow through as easily as we may think. The primary surface low does track pretty far west, but the mid level height field is poorly oriented and we get a secondary surface lwo that forms pretty much over Eastern NJ and then off the coast. This acts to pinch off the WAA in the mid and low levels until it starts moving to the north and east again.

Notice, also, how the low level jet is weak on the forecast models now. You can see the 850mb winds are less than 30 kts over almost the entire area, whereas the the 35+kt values are farther to the east/southeast and also focused more to the northwest near the primary surface low.

Finally, although we may get a bit of a warm push through here near 21z, that's already 4pm or later -- you aren't going to surge into the upper 50's or 60's at that time in February.

I think there's a decent chance this front gets hung up big time near Trenton or maybe a little farther north than that.

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This is one of the biggest teases of the winter... snow not too far north, temperatures in the 60s and 70s in the southern half of NJ, and nothing but a cold rain in NYC. I don't know if there's any meteorological reasoning for this but it seems that with many cases similar to this one, warm fronts end up stalling near central NJ.

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This is one of the biggest teases of the winter... snow not too far north, temperatures in the 60s and 70s in the southern half of NJ, and nothing but a cold rain in NYC. I don't know if there's any meteorological reasoning for this but it seems that with many cases similar to this one, warm fronts end up stalling near central NJ.

It's a Nina, with a primary well west that has the warm advection hang up just south of us. Classic SWFE. It's a perfect case where the cold air is deep enough over SNE and Boston to let them snow like crazy and have it be over before the warm air arrives, while here it's too warm and just miserable and cold rain. I'm surprised honestly we haven't seen more of these this winter. 07-08 had tons of these and drove I-84 south berserk. Very typical for Ninas and its why the Mid Atlantic often suffers bad while New England can have blockbuster winters. :(

It's likely too late for Boston to have that big a season but I can see them cashing in a few times at our expense if we have more storms like these in the next few weeks.

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It's a Nina, with a primary well west that has the warm advection hang up just south of us. Classic SWFE. It's a perfect case where the cold air is deep enough over SNE and Boston to let them snow like crazy and have it be over before the warm air arrives, while here it's too warm and just miserable and cold rain. I'm surprised honestly we haven't seen more of these this winter. 07-08 had tons of these and drove I-84 south berserk. Very typical for Ninas and its why the Mid Atlantic often suffers bad while New England can have blockbuster winters. :(

It's likely too late for Boston to have that big a season but I can see them cashing in a few times at our expense if we have more storms like these in the next few weeks.

This winter was terrible for just about everyone; at least someone got decent snows in 07-08, this year even New England didn't get to see those classic storms where it rains here while snowing decently to our north. Perhaps Boston could pull off a few events, but other than maybe a little bit of snow if we get lucky, with the unfavorable pattern still there and not going anywhere anytime soon, IMO we're pretty much done with the winter that never really started to begin with.

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John -- haven't looked much at this event honestly but your meteorological reasoning is definitely sound. Looking more and more like today was the warmest day of the week for the NYC immediate area. That secondary low transfer certainly will do the trick, keeping low level winds E/NE unfavorable for warm sector.

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A good rule of thumb is to utilize the 10c line at 850mb as a guide for the position of the sfc warm front.

On the 18z NAM, 850mb temps remain below the 10c line from Middlesex County northward throughout the event. There's a brief surge at 21z through central NJ, but temps quickly fall back thereafter. Warm fronts tend to end up a bit further south than progged, so it looks like a good chance TTN-BLM northward remain in the 40s most of the day. PHL should warm sector but even there it's a close call.

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So is tomorrow a cloudier version of today, upper 50s, low 60s up here?

Upper 50s-low 60s is probably too high with the warm front becoming likely to stay south of the entire area. I'm thinking highs will be in the mid 40s tomorrow, but it's hard to tell exactly as there's still no solid consensus for the location of the warm front tomorrow.

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18Z RGEM MSLP Hour 42.

Hard to tell but I would guess from that image it's a bit closer to the GFS... by hour 42 the NAM and GFS show the low pressure near the same position, but both of them take it there differently with the GFS putting more emphasis on the primary low and the NAM on the secondary low.

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Find that odd...nws going mid 40's here....u are not getting that warm tomorrow....ur like ten minutes from me

Gradients can be very sharp with warm fronts, even a few miles could make a difference. Early spring is notorious for these intense temperature gradients. Granted its still February but we might as well call it Spring since Winter barely existed this season.

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It's a Nina, with a primary well west that has the warm advection hang up just south of us. Classic SWFE. It's a perfect case where the cold air is deep enough over SNE and Boston to let them snow like crazy and have it be over before the warm air arrives, while here it's too warm and just miserable and cold rain. I'm surprised honestly we haven't seen more of these this winter. 07-08 had tons of these and drove I-84 south berserk. Very typical for Ninas and its why the Mid Atlantic often suffers bad while New England can have blockbuster winters. :(

It's likely too late for Boston to have that big a season but I can see them cashing in a few times at our expense if we have more storms like these in the next few weeks.

There is a tenor to your posts that has always struck me as a touch odd; that being this fascination with Boston and their snow and how it is always at your area's "expense".

First off, Boston / Logan Field averages....about 150% of the snow NYC receives on average...around 42" to 28" in a normal year. Believe it or not, there are legitimate reasons for this. First off, the difference in latitude is nearly 110 miles! So not only are they closer to sources of cold air; they are have a far better chance to be south of the track of a general mid-latitude cyclone. As a general rule, along the Eastern Seaboard, being further to the north will virtually always guarantee you more snowfall over the long haul...Norfolk averages more than Hatteras, Salisbury more than Norfok, Atlantic City more than Salisbury, NYC more than ACY, Boston more than NYC, Portland more than Boston (and the difference between the last two makes the NYC / Boston delta look puny).

Now as far as your tacit assertion that the NYC area always seems to miss out...I can happily cite scores of storms that just managed to produce good snows in NYC area while areas from Monmouth County south (or just a little below there) just missed out...like the Blizzard of '82...which put down around 10" in NYC but was generally rain south of a line from Barnegat over to Philly (the 40th parallel).

Just look at some of those seasonal snow maps from the last decade on NorthShoreWx's website...sharp gradients in seasonal snowfall are often south of the area just as they are often north...

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Wow, 0z NAM even further south... might be a period of heavy snow near Orange County and maybe even parts of Sussex (depending on whether the warm layer above 850mb crosses 0C or not) with the 850mb line even further south of the 18z run with 0.5" QPF. And to think that this is just 12 hours out...

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