EUROPEAN SHOWING INTENSE MAJOR STORM JUST OFFSHORE SATURDAY

EUROPEAN SHOWING INTENSE MAJOR STORM

JUST OFFSHORE SATURDAY

WHILE IT IS NOT THAT DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER MODELS, WHERE IT IS DIFFERENT IS THAT IT IS EVEN STRONGER WHICH MEANS COLDER AND HIGHER SNOW AMOUNTS.

 JANUARY 21TH 2015

# 2

The European this afternoon was much like the other models in showing a major storm along the east coast. This was no surprise  of course. However where it did surprise was in the intensity. All major models show and intense low around 980 mb. The Canadian was the deepest of them until the European took them out and has something in the 960's! This is a very intense feature. Those 10 extra millibars mean a lot when you are talking about a one degree difference in temperature in one location or another. The European would have the same idea as the others except it has a much bigger and deeper area of accumulating snow from Washington DC to Philadelphia, to New York City to Boston including immediate coastal locations. It argues that there will be a swath of one foot plus snow up and down I-95. 

Now we certainly can see how this could happen and if this were a winter where we had several snowfalls going into this weekend I would probably lean in the European's direction. But given that we are still waiting for a  4 inch snowfall in some areas let alone 8 or 12, I feel pretty good with sticking with my earlier idea of a the band of snow in the same area described above but keeping it at 4 to 8 inches for now and then revisit this tonight and Thursday.

# 3

# 4

The four map sequence unfortunately does not show us the in between map for Saturday evening as it is not available publically or for reproduction but it has a 968 low just south of Long Island with cold air everywhere. Basically it is a major snow producer even though it is moving like a rocket ship up to Eastern Canada. Once that's done we get a break and we still see the model trying to make another storm in the ocean but as we said a few days ago having 2 major storms back to back like this is a very rare occurence. We will continue to focus on the first one first. The bottom line is that a major snow producer is coming and it is a question of whether we wind up with a 4 to 8 inch snow which i posted about earlier or if it winds up being a fast hard heaving dumping snowstorm of one foot or more for everyone. Joe Cioffi has been a meteorologist for the last 35 years and has been in the New York, New Jersey, and Long Island area for the nearly the last 30 years. You can also find him on facebook where he posts daily on his weather page. Joe is also on Twitter @joecioffi