Well...it has certainly been a while since I fired up a blog post. This has been a horrific winter in the snowfall department across Connecticut. With this said, there is increasing confidence in a statewide accumulating snowfall event Monday evening into Tuesday morning. I don't have time (or energy) to go deep into the science stuff, so I'll just keep it a bit simple.
A vigorous and potent piece of shortwave energy currently across southern California moves across the Southwest Sunday and then rapidly ejects northeast across the central Plains Sunday night, across the Missouri Valley Monday morning, then east-northeast across the Ohio Valley Monday afternoon. As the shortwave rapidly ejects northeast with a very strong jet stream it will start to become sheared apart and weaken.
At the surface, low pressure moves northeast across the Great Plains through the Missouri Valley and upper-Midwest. The track of this low will push a warm front towards Connecticut. At the same time, a secondary low pressure may develop south of Long Island. It is this push of warm air, warm air advection, which is the focal point of this system and a several hour period of moderate-to-heavy precipitation to traverse the state. This push of warmer air comes with some intense lift
18z NAM for Windsor Locks, CT late Monday evening and early overnight shows some intense lift into the dendritic snow growth zone which would be suggestive of a several hour period of moderate-to-heavy snow.
So what can we expect?
- Snow begins to overspread the state Monday evening with moderate-to-heavy snow falling across much of the state during the late evening through mid-to-late overnight.
- Snowfall rates of 1'' to 1.5'' per hour are likely during the most intense periods of snow.
- Snow will also transition to rain across the central and southern part of the state moving into Tuesday morning as warmer air pushes in and the stronger lift exits.
