Philly Winter Storm Outlook

It’s been a mild and easy winter so far, and quite frankly, I’ve enjoyed the lack of snow and the mild temperatures.  (It’s a fallacy that all weather people like ‘bad weather’….maybe just those hyping it on TV.)

As mentioned, the medium and long range models haven’t been too consistent or accurate in the long term this winter, having shown a few big coastal storms for us that disappeared a few model runs later.

HOWEVER, the models (GFS and ECMWF) hare been showing for this weekend, specifically late Friday through Saturday time frame, the development of a deep coastal storm that may give us our first significant snowfall.  Unlike previous predicted storms that turned out to be modeling errors, this storm has shown consistently for the past week and there is relatively good agreeement between different models. .

The big uncertainty is the exact track, which is based on the amount of amplification of the jet stream.  A deamplification  may bring in mixed precipitation to areas– The usual north and west of I95 vs south and east scenario.  The model trends have been showing a deamplification trend after the storm, so this predicted snowstorm could easily turn into a mixed precipitation event.   Stay tuned.