Another winter storm to blast the US east coast this Saturday

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 12:00 UTC

Dr. Ryan Maue of weather.us has been watching the development of forecasts for a new major winter storm that is likely to pound the U.S. East Coast and Northeast/New England States Friday and Saturday. He writes:

Tropical moisture feed ahead of developing major winter storm will provide huge rainfall atop any frozen ground in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast into Saturday. Bad!

"Bad" in this case may equate to blizzard like conditions with heavy rain over frozen ground and snow, making for a real mess. Just look at the amount of precipitable water ahead of the system:

Here is the precipitation amounts from 6Z to 12Z on Saturday. That translates to East Coast times from Friday night to Saturday morning:

As you can see, snow will follow behind the liquid precip as cold air advects in behind the front and low, this means a layered mess is likely, with frozen ground, then rain on that , which will refreeze, then snow on top of that. It's like a layer cake from hell frozen over.

At least the timing avoids the Friday evening rush hour in major east coast cities. Let's hope the system does not speed up.

Comment: The US has been battered by cold storms since before winter even officially began:

• US: Polar vortex to bring 'extended period of severe winter weather', amidst already record breaking cold (November 17th 2017
• Another Arctic blast coming to the US this week and will stay around for weeks (December 4th 2017)
• "Bomb cyclone" Storm Grayson brings travel mayhem, high winds and icy flooding to US northeast - UPDATE (January 4th 2017)

And we're seeing similar weather patterns all over the northern hemisphere:

• Over a meter of snow in 72 hours for the Alps - Big falls in the Dolomites and Pyrenees too
• Heaviest snowfall in four years brings travel chaos to UK
• Temperatures in Siberia dropping to -79°F/-60°C and winter is just beginning