Day 45: Yet Another Snow Storm
After spending the last three days working almost exclusively on the Snow Shot of America project (with respect to this blog anyways), today I return to regular programming on the 365 blog. For those who aren’t familiar with the 365 blog, the purpose is to post a weather chart a day and discuss its significance to meteorologists. I try to keep most posts at a beginning to intermediate level so a wide-range of audiences can enjoy, but the occasional technical post (to challenge my current and former undergraduate students) will make its way to the blog. If a reader ever has a question about something posted, please feel free to post your question in the comments. I read each and every comment and will attempt to address your questions.
Tonight, I’ll focus on yet another snow storm that has affected a large portion of the central and soon-to-be eastern portions of the United States. The image atop this post is a water vapor image from earlier this morning. (For those who are unfamiliar with water vapor imagery, I give a brief discussion in this post.) Below, I’ve annotated the same graphic to help facilitate understanding. The yellow circle encompasses the atmospheric feature of interest, the “x” is the meteorological shorthand for “maX”, and the yellow line is the actual/projected path of this feature in the near term.
The shortwave trough (upper-level low) that was/is/will be responsible for the snow across the southern and eastern United States was located near Omaha, NE this morning. On the southern and eastern side of this upper-level low center is where meteorologists would expect to find rising motion based on its current path. If adequate moisture exists in areas where rising motion is occurring (which it did/does), precipitation would be expected. Because the atmosphere is still relatively cold and supportive of snow, most of the precipitation that fell today, is falling tonight, and will fall tomorrow will be in the form of snow. Now, south of the Tennessee southern border, most of the precipitation has fallen as rain, with a quick chance of mixing with or changing to snow as the precipitation ends.
Based on the current forecast track of this upper-level low, people along the east coast should prepare for yet another chance of snow. In a normal year, this storm would have the potential to cause headaches all along the east coast from Washington D.C. to Boston. However, based on the major winter storms that have slammed the east coast this winter, this storm will be a minor nuisance in comparison. The only place where this might not be the case, and wider travel problems may be an issue would be from New York City north and east where winter snow has not been as great as in the Washington D.C to Philadelphia corridor.
