Greetings and welcome!
It is another chilly one tonight. I have 0ºF at 10pm and we are expecting -8 for an overnight low temperature. Last night we got down to -11, and today’s high temp that I saw was 9F. With some wind it was a cold 9ºF. We are in for more of the same tomorrow, tomorrow night and Saturday.
Everyone is looking forward to the Sunday-Wednesday stretch when we could get back into the 20s and have above zero nights. I didn’t look it up for today but if I recall our normal high and low temperatures for today are about 25 and 10.
We added another minute of daylight yesterday, up over 5 minutes since the December 21st solstice.
Ok so what the heck is a bomb cyclone? It sounds like some bologna that the news buddies made up to make the storm story more dramatic, doesn’t it? It isn’t, it is a real meteorological term for a very rapidly strengthening storm. It is based on the term bombogenesis. From Live Science.. Of the 43 North Atlantic storms that achieved hurricane-force winds during the winter of 2013-2014, 30 underwent bombogenesis, according to NOAA.
A couple of things contributed to the very strong storm off of the east coast. One is the extremely cold air that has invaded the south contrasting with the warmer Atlantic Ocean. Another is that we have very high pressure (1041mb) over central Canada, making a sharp pressure gradient possible, and usually the jet stream position contributes some energy to the storm.
In the end it is a very strong storm with near hurricane force winds and a lot of (lake effect) snow coming off of the ocean. I often make light of weather systems that come through here as weather hit the east coast and become news. That isn’t the case here, it is a very powerful storm.
The same push of cold air that has us snowless and below zero has brought snow as far south as Florida. A lot of folks in the south that haven’t seen snow in a long time are having snowball fights, building snowmen and crashing their cars on slippery roads. Snow on the palm trees in Florida made an impression on a lot of people.
As far as us getting snow.. we could see light snow up to an inch Saturday night into Sunday morning. It would be great if it got carried away and left 8″ again, but that isn’t in the forecast. After that there is a bigger storm showing up a week out for about the 11th. That one has potential if it tracks right. It could be 1-3, it could be 4-6″. Beyond the one week mark the GFS forcast model is showing some more active weather, more reasonable temperatures, and numerous chances for snow.
When I was out this morning I saw that Iron Snowshoe was out panning trails for the weekend. There isn’t much to work with but they are trying.
AJ asked how much snow is on the flowages. I really don’t know, most of the time when I go by it is in the dark. There are at least a couple of inches.
That is it for tonight. Have a good Friday and thank you for visiting!
RJB