By: Ryan Fannock
6:40PM Thursday
I'm sure you have heard about the winter storm coming our way. Social media is flooded with snow maps from different models. If you have been following along in my group, East Central PA Weather Talk, I haven't posted any insane snow total maps. Why? There's many runs of many models to go before Sunday arrives. Posting a snow map this early in the game is pointless because most likely things will change on the next model run. I'm going to let you know what I see at this point.
Snow will kick off between 6pm and 10pm from Southwest to Northeast. So if you live near Harrisburg, it will kick off for you first. Then snow will gradually push north and east.
Snow will fall heavy at times through about 3-4am. Then the forecast is hard to predict because mixing is possible. If you side with the EURO, a period of sleet and freezing rain will move in after the 4:00am hour. This mix will start in the southeast portions of our area first and gradually work it's way north. This occurs as the storm is winding down. So it won't last very long. Maybe a few hours of snow, sleet and freezing rain mixed. Gradually changing back to some scattered snow showers during the morning on Monday.
So the height of the storm will occur from about 11pm/12am to roughly 3-4am before mixing takes place. The storm will wrap up by mid-day on Monday.
It's still way too early to talk definite snowfall totals. Below I'll show you what each model says as of 6:50PM Thursday.
EURO: 5-10"
GFS: 6-9"
CMC: 1-3"
UKMET: 4-8"
CMC: 1-3"
UKMET: 4-8"
As you can see, between 1 and 10 inches is possible. So when people ask how much snow are we expecting, it's way too early to know since models don't agree. I'm favoring a EURO solution at this time, but that can change. You also gotta take in to account what the ensembles say. They are keeping the storm further EAST which would result in higher snow totals. So this is why I'm favoring the EURO because it's closest to what the ensembles print out.
That's all for now...
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