Daily Weather Pattern Discussion...One More Storm And A Pattern Shift!

Hello this is Junior Meteorologist Kyle Elliott with our daily weather pattern discussion...and we have one more storm to go before things start to calm down around here for awhile as an arctic northwest flow of cold air comes into our area for almost this entire week into the early weekend...before much warmer air comes into our area by late in the weekend. First, though, before I deal with the long-range outlook, I will go into my latest thoughts on the 5th storm in the series of storms I mentioned 7-10 days ago. Well in my opinion, the models have underplayed the storm so far and I see no reason why the storm should not remain stronger than the models say as it has plenty of energy to work with in a rather moist airmass that is in place across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast. There are more winter weather advisories, snow advisories, winter storm warnings, and heavy snow warnings out there than I can count from Illinois to Ohio to Pennsylvania to New York to New England and Maine, so this small but potent little storm will affect many people across many hundreds or even thousands of miles. Anyway, I will get into local forecasts and more details on the storm right now...first, I'm not sure whether to go with more rain or snow south of the PA turnpike in south-central and southeastern Pennsylvania. Personally, seeing as temperatures have already dropped into the lower 30s and upper 20s across most of the area, I would have to lean more toward all snow this go around, but on the same token, warmer air is being drawn up in front of this system and could come into our region as the precipitation arrives. Right now, though, I think York and Harrisburg will see around an inch from this storm, Allentown and Easton will see around 2-3 inches, and Scranton will see about 3-5 inches. Anywhere north and northeast of that line, where more advisories and heavier precipitation will occur, I would not be surprised to see places picking up anywhere from 5-14 inches depending on exact location in the New England States. Basically, the farther north into New England you go, the higher the snowfall amounts will be. I do think that most of the forecasters and models are slightly too far north on the rain/snow line as I think it will set up along the mason/dixon line to just north of Philly and New York instead of through the Susquehanna Valley and Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, so that should give southern Pennsylvania near York and Harrisburg at least a chance at some heavy bursts of snow toward 6 to 11 A.M. tomorow morning with total accumulations of around a slushy inch. After that storm pulls away, winds will gusts upwards of 40 MPH on Wednesday as lake-effect snow squalls come over the mountains and move through central and eastern Pennsylvania. Be careful driving Wednesday as lake-effect snow squalls could set up anywhere, causing the visibility to rapidly drop to 200 yards or so in only a few miles. Someone, I think, could see upwards of a quick inch of snow on Wednesday in central and east-central Pennsylvania, but it would be quick and nothing to dwell on for very long. So that about covers the short-term, so I might as well get started on the ever-so-infamous long-range. After two or three icy cold days Wednesday through Friday of this week, temperatures will quickly moderate and approach the 50 degree mark by Sunday for most of soutern Pennsylvania. All of PA should see highs near or above 50 by next Monday or Tuesday, with even some 60 degree readings possible in the southeast anywhere from Gettysburg to Harrisburg to Reading to Allentown southeastward. I was starting to get excited for mid-January earlier today as the GFS model showed the possibility of a pattern shift to the much colder by January 15th, but the latest 18z run of the model showed warmth continuing the whole way through January 17th and beyond. So here's what I think...I think we will see about a 5-9 day period of very warm weather for this time of year followed by a pattern that brings a few days of cold and a few days of warmth as we saw early in December. So I do not, obviously, want to go into specifics just yet on the longer range as this winter has been anything but easy to predict, but I just thought I'd let ya'll know what the pattern may be like after this cold first week of the New Year. So that's about all I have for ya'll for now, but I will be posting a clipper forecast snowfall map in the next half hour or so, so hope ya'll have a great New Years Eve and if I get a chance I will post another update on the clipper at around 12:10 January 1, 2008! If you have any questions on this forecast or would like to know my forecast clipper snowfall accumulation for your area, please, feel free to e-mail me at akstormtracker17@yahoo.com or kyleae@earthlink.net! This is Junior Meteorologist (Storm Tracker) Kyle Elliott reporting for the AKStormtracker Forecasting Center!