Sunday, December 3, 2006

Coastal Teaser #1 - LOW and Away

The one encouraging thing to come out of tomorrow/s near-miss coastal storm is the L/W pattern continues to cough up nor'easters. This pattern has been on-going for months and is common in +ENSO years so it/s only a matter of time before cold air and moisture coverge into a good contest storm.

DISCUSSION: Eta brings a brief three to five hour period light snow to the SNE coast soon after sunrise Monday before ending during the early afternoon. GooFuS 2M temperture prog keeps 32° isotherm well inland (implying an all liquid event), but that could be a consequence of the model/s inability to correctly resolve shallow cold air masses. Makes me nostalgic for the LFM!

The primary snowfall-limiting conditions are 1) the warm boundary layer at most stations, 2) the best dynamic forcing is offshore, and 3) an upstream kicker in a progressive UA flow regime. Snowfall amounts expected to be in the nuisance category, so there/ll be no Contest for this event.

The 20:01 UTC enhanced IR image from GOES-8 shows the cooling cloud top temperatures INVOF the nascient LOW developing S of HSE.

No comments: