Weekend Update

A few winter weather events are on the way to greater Delaware area. 

Over the weekend from the famous 30 inch FB blizzard, 2 separate blips of moisture will head in and impact the area. Both will be minor with maybe a coating to an inch both on Saturday and Sunday. Not a big deal at all.

Monday, a more potent system approaches from the west and has a shot to drop an inch or two, especially north of Dover. Anything this far out has a high rate of change. 

Wednesday- Thursday another low approaches out of the Gulf of Mexico, but the cold air is leaving as the storm approaches. This seems to have the makings of the "Delaware Special" of snow to sleet to rain. 

Note on this map where I've made some crude marks:

1. High Pressure East of Maine-- that's moving east and taking our cold air supply with it. 

2. Low pressure over Minnesota. That's not good having that to our NW because it turns the flow aloft to the SW, which eventually aides in the warming process.

3. We do have a Gulf of Mexico low, which is a good thing. 

Please know-

Weather models over 5 days are used for pattern ideas, not specifics. No real give ideas on accumulations because they would be highly subject to change. In certain situations you can make an educated guess, the pattern this year has been unstable and what's called a "north trend" on the models has been an issue. Think of the Monday snow last week where at first it was modeled as a Central VA event, then a DC event with Delaware being fringed, then jackpot Delaware, and finally it was mainly a rain event with the best snows being north of the PA border. 

Days 3-4 should allow for a general concepts and ideas, but the fine details will lacking and subject to change. You can lose a storm to model error after day 5-- days 3-4 should allow for more confidence, just finer details will be missing and subject to change. 

Days 1-2 should be fine tuning the details like how much snow, when will it change to rain, ice--ect. 

Weather models are a tool to use along with forecasting skill and knowledge of local climate that allows for better forecasting. Often, when a weatherman is wrong is because they don't have exact data. If you were asked to estimate spending over a 7 day period, you could get a general idea but the EXACT amount be off. Weather models are very skilled in that they have to do a ton of estimation based on CURRENT information. However, the details will always be cloudy the farther out any event is.