Friday morning thoughts on Sunday’s winter storm

A significant winter storm will impact the area on Sunday and linger into Monday. This post will focus mostly on that event.

As always, you can rely on Finger Lakes Weather for a truthful, no-hype approach to this system. My focus is on keeping people safe with the best information I can provide, not generating buzz and unnecessary anxiety. With that said, you can trust that if I do say things will get bad, that I am genuinely concerned.

Please consider sharing FLX Weather with your family, friends, and colleagues. And, if you are able, please consider supporting my work financially at the bottom of the post. Without the support I get from donors, Finger Lakes Weather would not exist. Thank you!

Lastly, do not rely on social media to get the latest information. Social media prioritizes hyped-up engagement farming, weather reporting. The best way to get the latest information is to come directly to flxweather.com, or to sign up for my simple, free email service which sends out each blog post I make.

 

Friday-Saturday

Before getting to the storm, there are still some important weather considerations for today and tonight. The proverbial “calm before the storm” won’t totally be the case this time around.

For a complete breakdown of snow, wind, and hazardous wind chills today, please see my Weather Planner post for the day.

In summary, though, temperatures will fall throughout the day and winds will become blustery. This will produce subzero wind chills most of the day, and wind chills below -10 later this afternoon through the night.

Lake effect snow will also enter the area from the north this evening with several inches of localized accumulation across portions of the northeastern Finger Lakes.

This will then continue into Saturday.

Snow will be most likely across Wayne and Cayuga counties with occasional excursions into neighboring areas. Several additional inches will be possible, along with areas of poor travel conditions.

Elsewhere, some sun may come out. Winds will be lighter than today, but temperatures colder with many areas failing to even reach 10 degrees.

Snow will linger near the southeast shore of Lake Ontario into the evening but will eventually move out as winds swing around to the southeast ahead of the storm.

 

Storm Timing and Snow Intensity

The first flakes in the region from the storm should start to fall well after midnight Saturday night, but before dawn Sunday morning. The snow will come in from the south, so the Southern Tier will be the first to see the snow start.

The snow will spread north through Sunday morning and should cover the area by late morning.

Snow rates will increase steadily with heavy snow through the afternoon and evening.

During this afternoon and evening period, we may see localized intense snow bands capable of producing snow at two or even more inches per hour.

The snow intensity should quickly drop off in the late evening and overnight hours with mainly flurries Monday morning.

Snow will linger southeast of Lake Ontario through Monday, possibly intensifying later in the day as lake effect becomes better organized. The location and extent of the lake effect remains uncertain, but are starting to become decoupled from the storm itself. If this continues, I will start to talk about it more as a separate event rather than an extension of the storm.

There is a high confidence in this overall structure:

• Snow arriving early Sunday
• Heavy snow Sunday afternoon and evening
• Snow tapers off overnight Sunday into early Monday
• Lake effect of some sort later Monday

 

Storm Impacts & Amounts

Today is a key moment in fine tuning the expected snow amounts. Some of the shorter-range, more detailed models are beginning to go out far enough to show this storm.

In particular, one model that I lean on very heavily year round, the 3km NAM (North American Mesoscale), will capture most of the storm in its runs later on today.

This model is especially important because of its skill in modeling the temperature above the surface in these types of systems. Pretty much all other models have a cold bias, which has the potential to inflate snowfall totals.

Warm air aloft can change the entire structure of snowflakes away from the classic star-shaped flakes that can pile up quickly, to flatter, more column-like, or needle-like structures that accumulate slower.

Still, we are talking about significant snowfall, regardless. Were this system all rain, we would likely see three-quarters to an inch of rain. A highly assumptive and usually inaccurate rule of thumb is to multiply that by 10. Our climatology says multiplying by 12 or 13 is a very slightly better method. These methods alone push snow totals toward double-digit territory.

However, with the cold air in place, multiplying by 15 or 20 is a bit more accurate for this particular system. You can see how that drastically changes the picture, pushing snow totals well over a foot.

The truth of the matter is that this snow-to-liquid ratio is not constant throughout the storm. At times it may be over 20, while other times it may drop below 15. It all depends on the snowflake formation and shapes.

I am hoping to sort through all this data today and publish a snow map tonight. If I can get the technical aspects in order, I will create the snow map live on video so you can see more of my process and know with 100% certainty that my forecast maps are hand-drawn by a local expert, not a machine like most other maps.

 

Wind & Cold

Temperatures at the surface will remain quite steady throughout the storm, between 10-15 degrees for most areas. A few of the typically warmer pockets may get above 15 degrees at times.

At these temperatures, road salt loses most or all of its effectiveness. This will make it very difficult for the road crews to keep the roads in decent shape. Under the intense snow bands where it is snowing at an inch every 60, 30, or even 20 minutes, it will be nearly impossible.

Travel, therefore, will become hazardous quickly Sunday morning and will remain as such well into Monday, even as the snow stops falling. Travel should be highly discouraged Sunday afternoon and evening in particular.

Winds will be light on Sunday with speeds around 10 mph from the southeast. This, at least, should work in our favor with minimal blowing and drifting and wind chills staying out of the truly dangerous range. That being said, if travelers get stuck, they could find themselves in a dangerous situation with extended exposure to the cold.

The wind will pick up on Monday as it turns to the northwest. Wind speeds will be near or over 15 mph in the afternoon with gusts occasionally over 30 mph. Wind chills will fall further below zero, and blowing and drifting will keep prone roadways difficult to traverse. Again, it will be too cold for road salt to do much.

 

How Finger Lakes Weather is Different

Already, reading through this blog post, you can see how different Finger Lakes Weather is from most other weather sources.

As I said at the beginning of the post, my focus is providing useful information that will help you stay safe.

Here are some things you will NOT see from me:

• Fancy graphics that cannot capture the important details of the storm. They say a picture is worth 1000 words… well this post (so far) is 1300 words. I’d rather put my effort into explaining the whole picture than only capturing part of it with a graphic that takes me an hour+ to create.
• Images of models. Did you know that for a single attribute at a single time, I can easily look at hundreds of pieces of model data? Posting one single image tells less than 1/100^th of the story. Model data also needs to be professionally analyzed. They should not be used as a quick and easy way to farm engagement and hype.
• Multiple Snow Maps. One of the complaints I hear most about other forecasts is that they are always changing. Phone apps in particular are especially bad about this. That is because they run off straight model data… so every time the model updates, the forecast changes. Instead, I wait to publish a single snow map that I am confident will be accurate. Again, it is about going beyond the model data and doing actual science. As I said earlier, I am hoping to make my snow map live on video tonight, though it could be Saturday morning.
• Everything I do is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. That will always be the case. I refuse to let anyone get in a bad situation because they couldn’t afford to access the information they needed.

 

And here are some things you WILL continue to get from me:

• Honesty, Accuracy, and Accessibility. These are my three core values. They are not nice platitudes; they have guided me for years and are the bedrock on which FLX Weather is built.
• Balanced tone. Even when things are serious, I try to explain them in a clear, even tone. My job is not to make you anxious. It is to reassure you that you have the information you need to avoid dangerous situations as best you can.
• Detailed breakdowns. Again, it is all about equipping you with the information you need. On your part, it means you will have to read a bit. But if you’ve gotten this far in this post, you’ve already aced that!
• Ask Drew! Part of getting you the information you need and satisfying the Accessibility value is welcoming your personal questions. Over the years, I’ve answered hundreds of questions about travel routes, timing, and alternative routes, and many unique situations and concerns. To help me help you, please direct all such questions through the Ask Drew! page.
• Local independence. My services are almost totally funded by donors who choose to freely give as a thank you for a job well done. I have a select number of local businesses that sponsor FLX Weather, and two local media partners that I supply weather forecasts to. 100% of the money I make is locally sourced. I get no government funding, grants, or corporate funding.

 

My least favorite part of Finger Lakes Weather is the business side of things, and asking for donations during big events in particular. I do not increase my donor asks during storms to take advantage of bad situations.

However, I know that I have a responsibility to do so. Your support makes it possible for me to have the personal flexibility to almost always be available to work for you. Whether it is hours on a severe thunderstorm live blog, or the countless hours of constant monitoring and studying I do behind the scenes… your donations truly do matter and are the engine that makes that work possible. It is not any stretch to say that without my donors, Finger Lakes Weather would have folded years ago… and without ongoing support will not continue.

This service does not make me rich. On the contrary, for years, it has barely been enough to continue as a somewhat viable primary source of income for my growing family.

So, if you appreciate how Finger Lakes Weather is different, the hours of work I put into this, and the philosophies I hold to in order to make a better local weather service… please consider giving. Monthly donations are especially encouraged, as they give me the steady income I need to reliably continue.

Thank you for your support and for trusting me as your weather source!

Please consider making a contribution using the forms below or sponsoring FLX Weather with your business. Checks may also be mailed to: Finger Lakes Weather LLC, PO Box 326, Groton, NY 13073

Thank you for your continued support of Honest, Accurate, Accessible Weather!

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Checks may also be mailed to: Finger Lakes Weather LLC, PO Box 326, Groton, NY 13073