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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Eastern US Snow Storm threat Feb 11th-14th

Good Morning

After what has been an extremely warm winter things are changing as part of the Polar vortex relocates itself in Southeastern Canada. This feature may combine itself with a couple of other large scale features to produce a Noreaster the weekend before Valentines day. It all depends on where a subtropical jet strean shortwave starts to phase with the polar jet stream and its related vortex. This will set up a baroclinic zone along the east coast and a powerful low pressure system may form and ride up this zone in Miller A fashion.

The GFS has been the most consistant model showing this possibility and this remains the biggest eastern US winter threat of the season. The trend all winter has been for these southern stream shortwaves to cuttoff in the southwestern United States and remain cuttoff... but this shortwave is modeled to continue across the southern part of the conus without getting cuttoff from the polar jet and will likely phase with the northern stream at some point.

At the same time a northern stream wave of energy is moving across the northern tier of the US in tandem with the southern one. This will likely result in the most signifigant snowstorm in the eastern US this season but where the snow falls has yet to be determined. At this time guidance suggests a Gulf low threat and I have a higher than normal confidence level in accumulating snow in the Tennesseee valley.

Nothing written in stone yet but there is certainly a threat of winter weather in the eastern US near Valentines day or a couple of days before...the exact track of the stormcenter will decide who sees the accumulating snow.


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