Level 1 that was in place for December 19-21st has been cancelled.
Models now are in harmony that this system will stay to the south and east of the region. We will continue to monitor the situation since there are some things different from what was modeled but the moral of the story is that this will stay south and east. North Carolina looks to pick up some wintry precipitation.
Looking at the models tonight, in addition to the above we find that outside of one model we have good agreement at lead time of 6-7 days that we could be looking at a white X mas.
We see the following on the GFS on the 00z run.
Total QPF thru the period…
As you can see the GFS is showing a white christmas across the vast majority of the region. Now…if it was just the GFS showing this system i would be a little hesitant to give it any credence. However..the ECM is also showing the same type of system with very similar results. Though the operational ECM has a longer duration event..However..the means of the ECM do not agree with the longer duration event but rather paint a white picture from X Mas Eve Night into X Mas night.
Total QPF that the ECM is showing…
Light green is .25-.50
Dark Green is .50-.75
Map is courtesy of Tombo from R.W.S weather forums as well as American Wx forums.
Generally what we will be dealing with is what I like to call a continental cruiser. This essentially means its an area of low pressure that comes on the west coast at a certain latitude and then enters off the east coast at that same latitude before either sliding off the coast east or rounding the corner. Both the GFS and ECM means show this rounding the corner after passing south of the region in the map above.
So, perhaps since the Grinch has decided to steal the Snow for the Weekend ..perhaps Santa can make up for it on X mas day. With such strong support at this lead time on this system with the models..confidence is pretty high that there will indeed be a system that produces snow..with the exact track still to be determined.
It would take a lot of changes to the modeling for this to become a GLC because of the confluent flow of very cold air over the Mid Atlantic into the Northeast as well as across the Northern tier of the Conus.
So this is something we will be tracking and will keep you updated on this situation.
Note: Thought it was worthy enough to mention that a pro met has been broadcasting the 15th of December as the last day of winter. This certainly is not the case.
Stay tuned to Real Wx Services as we have been talking about the cold winter chances since the last month of the hurricane season!
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