Hitting The Bars

Really wanted to get to other things tonight aside from weather but things are getting comical now.  There is talk of where this winter will rank in the history of Boston.  The way things are going I wouldn't be stunned if it became the snowiest.  What's more impressive is most of it has come over the past three weeks.  Get ready for more.

I'm not breaking any rules because the things I am posting do not have much of an impact on us.  At least not right now.  In case you haven't heard it is going to get cold.  Of course you have because I said that a few times on here.  In fact I'm pretty sure you can enjoy the cold right into mid March.  Part of what makes this intriguing is it isn't just the northeast.  The cold extends right down to the coast of Florida.  It too doesn't make much of a move.

I'm not really sure what to tell the people of New England at this point.  Numerous places received more than two feet of snow today.  Which means there are places that have seen over 60 inches of snow in the past three storms.  Today was clearly not a nor'easter.  The next one, well...

Seriously?  That is nuts.  In the next image the millibars drop down to 970.  I'm sure I've said it before but the lower the drop the more intense a storm will become.  It might also help to know that pressure is listed in inches which I believe show up on local weather forecasts either on The Weather Channel or local news.  I will double check as soon as my local weather comes on.  Almost everything weather related is done in metric.  As is the above.  1013 millibars is standard.  980 equates to roughly a category one hurricane.  Let me just say that while the storm above is very strong I am putting this up here because the weather Boston has been getting lately is historically odd.  This would take it way over the top.  FYI - Late Thursday

Everything from here down is the second reason I decided to post.  Hold on.  TWC does indeed include the current pressure on the local forecast which is currently 29.99 or about normal.  Back to the show.  I'm going to pull back from the image above a bit so you can see the shape of the storm from afar.  Think of this as looking down from space.

   
This is one reason you don't want to be out on a boat during these storms.  You can see the tight formation close to the storm.  Once again these look very much like hurricanes with the circular formation, strong winds close to the center and heavy precip on the north and west sides.  Isobars remain close for hundreds of miles.  No doubt this is a big one.  Easily over a foot from Long Island to Maine.  Also known as the jackpot zone of 2014-15.

Now watch this.

What the hell?  This is the system trying to crank for the weekend.  Look at the size of this storm even compared to the other one.  You have snow sitting off the coast of Florida.  Heck there is a reading of 35 degrees in Florida with the 32 degree read line along the Florida-Georgia border.  As the storm continues towards Canada it drops to 951mb.  Not entirely uncommon when it gets sucked into the jet.  Does show the potential strength.  This is too far away.  I posted it now because if the trough digs in a bit more with no worry about cold air in place I'm afraid Boston could disappear from the map under the amount of snow they will see from the previous storm and this one.

LEHIGH VALLEY 

The maps above do not show either storm hitting us.  That doesn't mean we won't see anything.  The one on the weekend is too far out so I won't touch base on that one.  The system for Thursday falls right into the time frame when we can start to take a look at predictions.

Of course the model I wanted to use is currently updating so I will have to come back later to finish this post.  Stay tuned for some rudimentary figures.

 
GFS is not impressed with Thursday.  This map is starting to look common for our area.