Rain/Mix Ending as Snow to Strong Winds on Tuesday

Here we go with another challenging event to forecast overnight into Tuesday Morning. It may be the wind behind the system that ends up being the bigger news story. A cold front is approaching the region. The models continue to shift the heaviest axis of an area of 0.10” to 0.25” of available liquid. Some runs, as you can find in previous posts, cover the entire region while others only cover parts of the area. The “540 Line” continues to be shifting well offshore as the bulk of the precipitation falls. However, the boundary layer and the surface is likely going to be above freezing. Therefore the normal equivalent of one to three inches of snow will not work for this storm. Some snow may indeed fall for less than six hours, but this will likely be a situation where the flakes melt on contact with the surface. There still appears to be a small window of opportunity for some rain to mix with the wet snow at the start of this event and there could also be some sleet mixing in with the wet snow. The higher resolution models continue to show some liquid rain, although I do not recall many events where the “540 Line” was hundreds of miles offshore and we were dealing with liquid precipitation. In the Northwestern Counties, the temperatures will be closest to freezing at the surface and this is the area that has the greatest chance for accumulating snowfall and hazardous road conditions. Temperatures will be highest in the morning hours and then fall throughout the daylight hours. We will have to see how quickly temperatures fall just before the morning commute as they may fall in some areas to around freezing raising concerns for some black ice. The temperatures will continue to drop throughout the day. Overall, it is appearing more likely that this will be a minor headache.

Simply put, a rain or rain/snow changes to snow for just about everyone and all of this is for less than six hours and the ground may not support much accumulation. There still remains a low probability that the energy from Florida will scrape New Jersey with heavier precipitation.

Strong Northwest winds will build in, turning the lake effect snow machine on although the lakes are likely a bit frozen. There appears to also be a disturbance crossing Northern New Jersey. All of these factors suggest some snow squalls or snow showers could develop on Tuesday Afternoon. Watch out for these as squalls could drop a quick coating of snow and reduce visibility with the gusty winds. The most likely area of these snow squalls is from about Route 130 near North Brunswick and points north from that area.