Historic Storm Potential Next Week

A piece of energy currently over the Pacific will move into British Columbia and Alberta this weekend. This energy will dig a trough into the Midwest on Monday. The trough will amplify quickly, with a 130kt jet max developing on the Gulf coast. The jet will expand and intensify through Tuesday, exceeding 150kt Tuesday afternoon. All model guidance is projecting the H5 trough to close off Monday afternoon with a 504dm H5 low closed by 250m by Tuesday night. A very intense vorticity max near 40/s will rotate around to the east side of the trough as it tilts negative during the day Tuesday, with surface low pressure developing in the deep south and bombing out into the 970's ... over New York!

Despite current model discrepancies that would be present with any amplified pattern of this magnitude, at this time, the Euro, GFS, and Canadian guidance all take the low inland, with a raging southerly jet across New England. This would stream moisture into the region, plus temperatures up into the 40's and 50's. Verbatim, we would be looking at a huge rain and wind storm with potential for significant flooding and wind damage as the low bombs out to our west. Below is the 00z Euro projection for 144 hours:



However, a couple things to consider still - We will be looking at a transient +PNA ridge in the west to start February. The NAO is poised to fall - GFS ensembles are particularly robust with a -NAO and west based too.

IF we could build higher pressures in southern Canada, which could be a solution given less energy in the trough to the north, then the low would be forced further south and east, and present what would be a crippling blizzard. In addition, with the building heights to the north as the NAO goes negative, the low would be held in place south of New England, offering numerous hours of pounding snow and wind.

This is all a hypothetical situation obviously, and considering model trends recently, it's unlikely to verify. There hasn't been much offered on the models to suggest the situation described above, although the changes that would be needed that I outlined above aren't out of the question yet. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

Regardless of the exact evolution of the storm (flooding or blizzard), we are going to be looking at an historic storm affecting the eastern third of the nation next week.