Another nor'easter is on its way and you've got to be f*cking kidding
The fourth coastal storm in three weeks to hammer the Eastern Seaboard appears likely to form early next week, potentially delivering yet another crippling snowstorm to millions from the Mid-Atlantic to New England. Unlike the previous storms, this one is going to form further to the south, putting the Washington, D.C. area, along with coastal Maryland and Delaware, into play. We're sure they're thrilled to be included.
The nor'easter continues to show up in projections from all the most reliable computer models, including the American model, known as the Global Forecast System or GFS, and the European Model, or "Euro." Other models, including one run by our Canadian neighbors, also depict the event.
However, each of these model projections differs in important details that will ultimately determine who gets accumulating snow, who gets slop, and who gets heavy rain.
The most confident of all the storm impacts is that it will be a slow-mover, spinning off the coast of the Mid-Atlantic and moving to the northeast from Tuesday through Thursday. This will bring the threat of high onshore winds, battering waves, and coastal flooding to the beaches of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. There's added uncertainty about whether the storm will move close enough to southern New England to result in another round of accumulating snow and coastal flooding there, but that is a possibility.
If this storm follows a track that socks the D.C. area with heavy, wet snow and then slams the Philadelphia area, New York City, Hartford, and Boston, it would be a remarkable feat in a month that is already going down in the books in some areas as one of the snowiest Marches on record. Though snow fans in the DC area have had one of the most disappointing winters on record there, with fewer than 5 inches of snow falling all season so far.
Parts of the Berkshires, Green and White Mountains have picked up nearly 100 inches of snow in the past 2 to 3 weeks alone, with about 5 feet at Snowshoe resort in West Virginia, too. But while the ski areas are rejoicing at this late season bounty, millions are getting tired of shoveling out their driveways, enduring power outages, and clearing up tree damage from their property.
To them, another storm is not exactly good news.
The string of storms is the result of a combination of factors that meteorologists observed as they moved into place in February.
Computer models of the next storm show a familiar scenario of a large dip, or trough, in the jet stream carving out a slow-moving storm system across the East next week. The storm will be effectively stuck in place, hemmed in by a blocking pattern over the North Atlantic and Greenland, consisting of an area of high pressure in the mid-to-upper atmosphere. Such blocking patterns tend to be prerequisites for big East Coast snowstorms, because they help disturbances embedded in different branches of the jet stream to come together, or "phase," creating a major storm system.
Other factors – including a displaced polar vortex, record negative North Atlantic Oscillation index, and climate pattern in the tropics that favors more storminess – help explain why the East Coast is having such a hard time letting winter go.
Differences between computer models in projecting the evolution of the midweek storm have to do with how and when weather disturbances phase, as well as the precise track of a low pressure area along the coast. Computer models will likely jump around through the weekend as they try to get a better handle on the ingredients for the storm, potentially resulting in big changes to the forecast.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
