January 6-8th To Be Or Not To Be? Its All about the Pattern!

In the update focusing on the 18 Z GFS we pointed out to keep an eye on what should be a stronger southern stream S/W that should become part of the overall evolution of this system. 00z GFS above has done exactly that. It now has this southern stream S/W involved….

However..we mentioned that we should look for the Northern Stream system or clipper to slow down some..which the GFS did indeed do that..however it slows it down too much, in all likelyhood.

This allows the southern stream S/W to slide more south and east of the area instead of pulling in closer to the coast because its not able to phase.

Now on the GFS means we notice this energy is slightly faster then the operational run…

And notice how the means is then tugged Southwest of the Op position at the same time. Now its important to keep this in mind as we come back to look at this as well as other guidance in reference to this and what could be a red flag to the overall evolution as its depicted on the Global Models.

Lets look at the rest of the guidance and we are going to look at 144 hrs for the purpose of this update.

GFS 144 hrs

UKMET 144hrs

GGEM 144 hrs

ECM 144 hrs

Notice the position of the secondary low pressure on all the above models. First thing one notices is that the UKMET is actually more west then the ECM. So that is potentially one red flag to the ECM..But here is where the guidance gets alot more interesting.

What you are looking at here above now is the 00z NOGAPS. A couple things stand out right here. First of all when you look at 120 hrs on the NOGAPS you see that the clipper system is almost in the exact same spot as the GFS ensemble means. 2nd thing you notice is that the NOGAPS is more NW or maybe i should say Southwest…at 144 hrs compared to all other guidance.

Now lets look at the GFS means once again so we can see how well it compares at 120 to the NOGAPS above.

Pretty similar in all aspects but yet the GFS means ends up looking like this at 144hrs

While admittedly this is further west then its operational counterpart..the NOGAPS being located more west then the other operational models seriously has to serve as a red flag to the rest of guidance that they are developing this system to far to the east.

Matter of fact..once again they want to take this system and put it over the GULF stream instead of developing it where the greatest thermal gradient would be which is on the western side of the Gulf stream.

So basically to sum things up ..I do not think we have seen the models come around to the final solution for this storm which essentially means that anyone from MD on north is still on the table for the potential of a snowstorm during this period.

Stay tuned for further updates on this developing system…Next update will be after 12 Z models!