ITHACA, NY – Take a deep breath and pour yourself another cup of drink of your choice. A few winter storms are disrupting the roads and making the trip a problem for the week ahead.
Your weekly weather (and storm summary)
Let’s get rid of the fleeting things before we get into this. It will be cloudy today with highs in the mid 20’s, and tonight it will be mostly cloudy with lows in the mid teens. The problems start tomorrow, late morning and early afternoon. A winter storm guard was issued by the Binghamton National Weather Service from 10:00 a.m. Monday to 4:00 p.m.
Our national weather situation is shaped by an exceptionally deep and powerful offshoot of the polar vortex that plowed through the Great Plains into Texas. On the bright side, that means we avoid the worst of the cold (Minneapolis will have a low point in the 20s, Omaha around -16°F, Oklahoma City is expected to hit -6°F, and Dallas will be close to 0°F). On the non-bright side, it creates a strongly amplified and energetic jet stream pattern, with the western (rear) edge of the stream jet side over the east coast. This energetic flow will help strengthen and funnel a developing storm system from the Gulf Coast of Texas, across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast northeast, and we are in the eye of the cold side of its precipitation shield.
YOUR LOCAL WEATHER NEWS HAS BEEN MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF:
Image courtesy of NWS Binghamton.
Tompkins County – and if you’re one of our local readers, anywhere in the north and west of Binghamton – can expect a colder event that is completely snowy. Expect light to moderate snow during the afternoon and evening Monday, and it will become more intense and develop into heavier snow tires after midnight, and these heavier tires will continue until late morning, with lighter intervals. A few (2-3 “) centimeters will fall by the end of the day Monday, with 6-9” overnight until Tuesday morning, so we’re looking at the total amounts in the 8-12 “range. Not something people here are It was not used to, but travel will be difficult, especially difficult, as the snow builds up between plow runs, so take more time if you are on the roads early Monday and especially Tuesday, highs will be in the mid 20s on Monday, and lows in the low 20s Monday night.
If you travel from the area on Monday night, keep in mind that the further south and east you go, the less snow you will see, but instead it will see a greater amount of snow and icy rain. The layer of warm air is thicker in the south and east, but there will still be a layer of cold air between the ground and the warm air further up (hot air is less dense than cold air). If you start to see more than 0.1 “ice, it is the case that you start to suffer widespread travel interruptions and power outages due to the ice’s joints. This means that if you are on your way to Boston, New York or Philadelphia, dangerous icy conditions and probable delays.In normal winter conditions, it’s bad enough to drive on Route 17, but turning the highway into an ice-covered bobsleigh is even worse.
As the storm rises in the northeast on Tuesday afternoon, there will be a few showers with more weakened lakes behind the valley, but nothing important. With the colder air entering the back flank of the anticlockwise stream, a little more of the bitter North Pole air will infiltrate, with highs in the low 20s Tuesday under cloudy skies and a few isolated snow showers, and mostly cloudy skies with ‘ a few snow showers fell on Tuesday night as lows in the upper single digits.
High pressure will build in volatile from the west on Wednesday, and it should be our quietest day, with partly cloudy skies and highs in the mid-20s. Wednesday night it will be mostly cloudy and dry with lows in the lower teens.
The next system will start building northeast on Thursday. The large-scale jet stream pattern will continue, but in this case the jet ridge will have arranged slightly westward, meaning the core from the low passages to the west, placing Tompkins County in its hot sector. We start with temperatures in the upper teens and snow shortly after sunrise on Thursday, with light to moderate snow continuing through the day as the sun rises closer to freezing at sunset; estimate currently indicates 4-6 “, and the amount has been declining in the last few model picks.
Around midnight Thursday night until Friday morning, enough warm air would have thundered through the storm’s anticlockwise current to change the snow to rain, and the temperature would be in the low to mid 30s through the rest of the night and most of the day. Friday, a cold, steady rain as currently forecast. That warm air will make the difference between a few inches of snow and one foot, so we need to keep an eye on it for the next few days. Colder air will filter again on Friday night as the storm pressure’s low pressure center passes our longitude through sunset and kicks in northerly flow, and a few snow showers will continue on Friday night with lows around 20.°F.
Early indications for next weekend show that it will be quiet as high pressure builds in for Saturday and Sunday; on the cold (eastern) side of its clockwise Saturday, it will be partly cloudy with highs in the upper 20s, and on Sunday, on the warm (western) side of the highs, it looks like the temperature will make it to the mid-30s for peaks with partly to mostly cloudy skies.
Graphs courtesy of the NOAA Climate Forecasting Center.
Extended Outlook
By about this time next week, medium series models indicate a regime shift in the beam current configuration. With the polar vortex significantly depleted by its prolonged voyage to the Central United States, it will retreat, allowing a ridge to build in over much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, although at least one polar lobe continues, through Alaska, western Canada and the Northwest Pacific. The precipitation would be almost normal for the last third of February. The long-term runs indicate almost normal temperatures and precipitation for the beginning of March, which is also the beginning of the meteorological spring.
Hold thumbs up, tight? Enjoy your treat drinks and Valentine’s dinners, people. Hopefully they pipe up hot dishes.