Storm to Impact Southern New England Saturday, January 23rd, 2016?

Snow lovers rejoice as there may be some excellent news for you on the horizon.  After a near historic slow start in the snowfall department for many locations, as we move into the fourth weekend of January computer forecast models are showing some very interesting solutions with regards to a potentially strong coastal storm sometime early on this upcoming weekend.  At this point in time it is way too early to discuss details or get into specifics, however, we will take a look at the potential synoptic setup and determine the likelihood of a storm and potentially how big of a storm.

When looking at the medium/early long-range for a potential storm system the one piece of guidance that is extremely important to look at are the model ensemble means.  Model ensembles provide different "members" with each "member" providing a solution.  Ensembles are extremely useful in this range because they can provide a certain confidence level for the forecaster interpreting them.  If the different members are providing various solutions this would decrease the confidence a forecaster may have on a hit.  However, if the different members are more similar to one another, this would provide a much higher confidence level for the forecaster.  With this said, we will take a look at some of the ensemble members for the American GFS forecast model from the 12z run on January 18th valid for early morning on Saturday the 23rd:

The GFS ensemble members (the members being each individual panel showing a potential solution) are actually in fairly decent agreement of a storm track close enough to the coast to provide impacts to southern New England (and perhaps some major impacts).  Given how consistent the ensemble members are this gives a heightened sense of confidence that indeed we may see a storm at some point this weekend, perhaps very late Friday into Saturday.

As we move through the week the focus will be on a piece of energy which is expected to enter the United States from the Pacific-Northwest late tomorrow.  The piece of energy is expected to dive southeast into the southern plains, through the southeast and then work up the eastern sea-board where it may interact with some energy moving through the northern branch of the jet stream:

As we head towards the weekend the situation should continue to become more and more clear and a major focus will be placed on the 500mb level (which is shown in the graphic above).  This level is where the key pieces of energy are located and where interactions with the jet stream and energy would occur.  At this point in time its still too early to really go into great detail about what to expect, however, the potential certainly exists for not only a storm to impact southern New England but for a fairly big storm.  Stay tuned for further updates!