8:57 PM

The surface low that has brought a near historic 20.9 inches of snow in Central Park and over a foot in many locations throughout the northern Mid Atlantic is slowly weakening and exiting to the east.

The surface low is actually splitting into two separate low pressure systems, one which will eventually deepen once again well into the northern Atlantic and other which will sit under the upper low centered over Queens and Nassau Counties of New York.  A band of light to moderate snow will continue to move from the Atlantic through southern New England and into the central Hudson Valley tonight, producing another 3 to 6 inches for most locations in that region through tonight.  That band of moisture will eventually sink south and east around the 500 and 700 MB upper lows through eastern Pennsylvania, northern/central New Jersey, and the New York City metropolitan area in the form of scattered snow showers through tomorrow afternoon.  The snow showers will have the potential to be rather intense with snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour in some rare cases.  For most locations impact by these snow showers, a dusting to an additional inch of snow is possible.

Meanwhile, the area of snowfall over western Pennsylvania is due to a stretching of the atmosphere and a weak 700 MB disturbance that will not have a significant impact on the region and will not be a factor in the forecast for the region.

I’m going to wait until the snow is officially over from this storm before giving an overview, however thus far the potential for this storm that I was advertising has been meet or exceeded for all locations.  I was very impressed with the snowfall totals for New York City as I had been forecasting a tight gradient of 6 to 12 inches from Nassau County to New York and Richmond Counties and then a jump to 12 to 24 inches just across the river in New Jersey where all snow was expected.  A slight shift in the 850 MB frontal structure however by roughly 5 miles pushed the heavier snowfall amounts into New York City, which was addressed in last night’s radio show.

This storm, as a result, has become a storm that is in the top 5 storms that has impacted the New York City metro and specifically central park with officially 20.9″ and only .1″ away from exceeding the March 1888 winter storm.  Clearly this was a storm that was accurately advertised.  The winds were also impressive with many locations sustained at 20 mph and gusts well over 40 mph.  The combination of the heavy wet snow and strong winds have caused power outages for many locations throughout Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and also has lead to buildings collapsing under the weight of the heavy snow.  Travel in the morning as also severely impeded as well.

A complete overview of this storm will be done tomorrow along with a discussion on mesoscale banding and how this feature impacts snowfall totals.