Update on Developing Historic Nor’easter

A winter weather advisory is in effect for western and northwestern Virginia overnight, where a light wintry mix could result in a slick travel.  The winter weather advisory counties are shaded in light blue in the graphic below:
Surface temperatures will remain well above freezing in central Virginia overnight, but enough cold air a few thousand feet off the surface could result in a little sleet (ice pellets) mixing in with the rain tonight.  Most of the event will be rain for central and eastern Virginia, but colder air and moisture wrapping around the developing nor’easter could spread snow showers into locales along and east of I-95 and north of I-64 late Friday night into early Saturday.  Skies will quickly clear early Saturday morning and will remain sunny the rest of the day.  The graphic below shows our in-house weather model (RPM) stopped at 5 AM depicting show showers for parts of the area:
The nor’easter will rapidly intensify and head into the Northeast, dumping feet of snow in several major U.S. cities.  Boston appears to stand to be hit the hardest with between 2 and 2 1/2 feet of snow.  The graphic below shows the current warnings for the Northeast, with winter storm warnings in pink and blizzard warnings in white.The graphic below indicates our forecast for snowfall in the Northeast.  This amount of snow should easily be a top 10 all-time snowfall in Boston, and potentially a top 5.
Another Nor’easter will likely affect the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast next Wednesday and Thursday.  The track of this storm continues to be a little too far west to bring much snow into central Virginia, but this track could change over the next few days.  The GFS and Euro models continue to hint at the potential for a bigger storm late next weekend (February 17th), but the variability of these solutions continues to be wild and therefore unreliable this far out.  We’ll continue to track this very progressive pattern closely.  Click here for updates on my Facebook page.  -Zach