All Eyes Out West this Week

Why?  Because that's where our weekend storm is currently.  Sitting near the Gulf of Alaska is the beginning stages of what *could be our first accumulating snowfall for the season.  It's actually impressive, and a little unusual, to see this amount of cold coming after such a warm start to the month of November.  But it's not unheard of.  And leads to many questions regarding the specifics to any possible snow accumulations.

You see, the majority of the larger scale features are pretty much in agreement with this system: timing, trough (dip in the jet stream) developing over the northern half of the country, etc.  However, the smaller scale details such as ground/soil temperature, snow to liquid ratios, rain possibly before snow, still are big question marks.  I can tell you with fairly high confidence that it will snow Friday night into Saturday.  But getting into specifics as to how much will fall is like trying to throw a dart and hitting the bullseye over 100 yards away.  Sure, I could share and tweet raw model snowfall data (which are showing pretty high snow totals at this point), but what good is that going to do you if it's constantly changing.  Rather than say 'this model says we're going to get this much, and this model says we're going to get that much' I'd rather give you the probability that either, yes or no, what is coming is something we really need to pay attention to.  And with this next storm, I believe it is. 

With this storm in its beginning stages over open water, there is very little data sampling that takes place other than satellite, air plane and buoy data that is ingested into our weather forecast models.  Once this storm moves on shore, it will be moving into a more dense network of sensor data allowing us to get a better sampling of just what the atmosphere is doing in that particular location.  It's possible that once this better sampling of data occurs the storm track will shift, or maybe bring in more warm air than it was initially.  All those factors will have a great impact on our snow totals.  This is why you won't see a snowfall forecast map from the First Warn Weather team until at least 24 hours ahead of the expected snow.  If we're very confident that nothing will change, we will issue them earlier.

If this current forecast track were to stay and not change, there is a possibility that snow totals would reach close to six inches, or potentially higher.  However, changes are going to happen.  That's why we don't 'throw our eggs into one basket' as the old saying goes.  To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of advisory or watch were to be issued within the next 24 - 36 hours for the weekend.  Stay tuned!