It Can Snow With A "Warm Pattern"

And that might just occur next Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday as the global modeling is all pointing to an east coast storm in that time period.  Once again, the storm track will be ideal for frozen precip; the caveat being no antecedent cold air in place at our location.  Before I get to that, take a look at the last 30 days in terms of temps across North America.  It has most certainly been a mild pattern for the northern plains and here in the northeast and there's no question about that!  Note the below normal anomaly for the desert SW as they have received copious amounts of snow during the month of December.

The flurries that we are currently experiencing are compliments of the upper air disturbance that is digging SE from O Canada.  This was our hope of a white Christmas that failed to connect with the southern stream that the Euro believed was to occur.  Here is the current depiction of the 500 mb level of the atmosphere.  Note the "X" over east central PA.  That is the upper air vort max that created enough instability to give us the flurries as it passes over us this morning.  Also note the larger chunk of energy back over west TX.  That is our potential storm for Tuesday afternoon.

The Euro wants to create a rather vigorous storm that deepens to 996 mb off the NJ coast by Tuesday night.  It would be nice to get that huge High Pressure over western Ontario a bit further east.  Again, predict the high; predict the snow!  If that high lags back as shown, our precip here in southern PA will be mostly rain.

Here is the GFS for the surface for the same time period.  It has the low just a bit further inland and slightly weaker.  The rain/snow line runs north/south almost along the Susquehanna River.  I believe this will be one of those storms that snow will fall NW of a Morgantown-Altoona-State College-Binghamton and primarily rain for us here in the sub-tropics of south central PA.  Again, the time frame for all of this is Tuesday afternoon into early Wednesday.

There may be just enough cold air to create a sleet and freezing rain issue overnight Tuesday, but its waaaay too far in advance to tout that at this point.  Again, without any real cold air in place, I believe the chances for that are slim.  Here are the forecast high temps for Tuesday as per the GFS.  Simply put, that is just NOT A COLD MAP for December 27!

So kick back and enjoy your Christmas celebrations and thinking how much money will be saved over the next couple of weeks in terms of heating costs!  Also, enjoy this ditty from a crooner who my parents loved.  On this Christmas Eve, I am very grateful for the wonderful memories I have had in my life over the years during the Christmas season and my most dear memories are from my childhood as I'm sure many of yours are as well.

Merry Christmas y'all!

Smitty

AA:  It's been warm and we're watching a system for Tuesday night.  Could be dicey, but I doubt it at this point.