Welp, we're going through seasonal affective disorder with the abrupt change from marginally decent conditions to a full on spring melt and this week will probably be the worst of it with several rounds of rain and temperatures running generally 8F-13F above normal through next Monday. That's the bad news, but the good news is that chances of a pretty good snowstorm are increasing for Sunday-Monday and models presently generally see up to 18" or so falling in some northern areas. That's not locked in quite yet but there are equal chances of it both dumping even more snow as well as less. Let's start off with the 7 day loop from the ECMWF showing what we have coming at us this week.
This loop uses 6-hour precipitation intensity and that widens the size of the precipitation shields vs. what you will see on radar, so this isn't as bad as it looks, but it ain't good either. Ski areas across the Northeast will generally see 1"-2" of rain through the end of Friday and before the next storm approaches. Unfortunately our natural snowpack isn't doing that great right now and it will get much worse before the weekend, so hopefully Mother Nature comes through big for us. Snowology has already made a public call for everyone to put their snowblowers in storage and put their ski gear away just to help influence our chances. We might even get a nor'easter if enough of you all rage-quit the Northeast winter and book vacations out West! Every little bit counts folks. Don't burn stuff though, burning even more stuff of course isn't the answer to warm weather if you haven't figured that out yet.
I'm going to start this out with an update on the Sunday-Monday Storm Preview since that's clearly of the most interest, and then I'll go through the Precipitation Outlook and Temperature Outlook, and finally the Extended Range Outlook where I will bloviate a bit about patterns beyond the basics. There are no notable wind concerns until the storm hits on Sunday so we'll skip wind this week. There's a lot to cover so I'll keep the details sparse, and besides rain really ain't my thing of course.
