Wednesday February 14, 2024

2/14/2024

A cold and windy day ahead

A windy, chilly day is on tap for all for the day as high pressure to the northwest works to shove Tuesday's forecasting nightmare into Newfoundland. Northern areas may see some light snow as the upper-low that is trailing the storm in the Maritimes pivots around. Accumulations from Greenville to Houlton northward may amount to an inch, but with wind gusts in the 25-40 mph range, all that will do is blow around. Wind chills are expected to be below zero in the mountains all day and the low single digits elsewhere across the state.

Conditions will be breezy and cold overnight into Thursday. High pressure arrives later in the day on Thursday to shut off the air conditioner fan for most areas by late afternoon. That sets the table for the next system to arrive Thursday night.

A side arm knuckleballer on the way
Thursday night into early Friday

Wednesday 1 PM (18z) to Friday 7 PM (00z Saturday) - West to east flow with the two main ingredients combine Thursday over the Great Lakes. What moisture this system gathers will come from the king sized ponds, and it won't be much. This quick moving storm brings a quick hit of snow primarily for southwestern areas late Thursday evening into Friday morning.

This is a fun little system for the weather nerd in me. We don't get the spicy clippers too often over the south. When the idea is there, it's worth taking a dive into it.

This is the high end angle from two vantage points of the NAM3km short term model...

Thursday 7 PM (00z Friday) to Noon Friday (16z) - This idea shows the early part of the storm to be the most impactful. A warm air overrun from the south fuels the snow making machine and brings a blast of fluff at the onset around 11 PM to 2 AM before it settles out and gradually winds down in the morning.

This BUFKIT profile looking specifically at Sanford shows the high end atmospheric fun that could happen here. It shows the potential for the flash of snow with 1"+ snowfall rates between 11 PM and 1 AM.

With the deep snow growth region, chances are flakes will be on the larger side, and that is backed up by the model showing very little wind to damage them as they fall to the surface.

The QPF (Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) is very low with 0.10-0.30" of moisture associated with this.

With the cold air around, the total of all of these ingredients is a high snow to water ratio event, with potential for 20:1 or more.

Again, this is the extreme end here. I've fidgeted with the ratio settings on this to show how this may play out, as busting on the high end is a possibility.

If this extreme scenario plays out, this could yield upwards of 6" of fluffy snowfall.

As I put my objective forecaster hat back on, I am not convinced the high end is going to play out at this point. The ideas shown above are an outlier. Most other modeling has liquid equivalents around 0.10"-0.20" in the 1-3" region. Given the fact that models can juice up precipitation in these miniscule events where the margin of error is the thickness of a hair, this is the rational choice.

I will monitor and update on this Thursday morning.

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