Good afternoon, folks. Our pattern changing storm system continues to push toward the region with heavy rain and gusty winds arriving later tonight. That’s ahead of much colder air and the chance for some late week and weekend flakes.

All of this launches us into a harsh winter pattern for the final two weeks of the year.

Let’s start by talking rain because we have a lot of it ahead. A general 1″-3″ of rain will likely fall from tonight through Thursday morning. The forecast models continue to vary with placement and numbers, but all show a similar theme…

The GFS yesterday at this time had 5″ of rain falling across the south and southeast and I promptly called it out. This model just cannot grasp reality, but it’s obviously getting better as we get closer. Here’s the current run…

The model still cannot figure out the storm going up the east coast for Thursday and Friday. While all other models have a storm hugging the New England Coast, the GFS just takes that low eastward and out to sea. That’s the progressive bias the model has always had, it just seems more amplified with this new version. It’s a version that has serious issues that need to be addressed.

Over the past week, the Canadian Model has been the absolute best model with the complicated setup playing out. It’s still the only model aggressively showing rounds of light snow and flurries here Friday into the weekend…

After this, trust no model on the exact evolution of the extreme setup for next week. Still, we can gather some clues from the models on how things may progress in general. I think one system shears out as it comes at us late Monday and Tuesday. In other words… this shouldn’t amount to much as of now.

The reason is the system coming behind can develop into a major winter storm system from the Midwest to the East Coast. Several days ago, I highlighted December 21-23 as the time period to watch for such a system. The models do in fact indicate a storm developing in that window, but they vary greatly from run to run on how it rolls.

GFS

CANADIAN

 

This is part of a brutally cold pattern across that sends just about the entire country into the deep freeze. The Control Run of the EURO ENSEMBLES is the single coldest model run I’ve witnessed. The model literally runs out of colors…

Verbatim, that run is showing temps 40-50 below normal around here by Christmas weekend.

I will update things again later today. Until then, here are your radars…

Have a great afternoon and take care.