50/50 chance of waking up to snow tomorrow morning...better chance Thursday morning

The snow forecast starts with the weak system moving down from Canada tonight. Temperatures are marginal for snowfall, so the precipitation may start off as rain, but will change over to snow at some point. The other question is if the precipitation will extend far enough to the south for us to get any. Looking at the current radar...



The precipitation is currently around where anticipated by the forecast models, if not a bit south. These models show the southern portion of the precipitation brushing us late tonight, so I'd say there's about a 50/50 chance of us waking up to some snow tomorrow morning. Admittedly this doesn't look as good as it did last night, but it wasn't going to be that much in the first place, so I wouldn't worry too much...






Looking ahead to the potentially bigger storm on Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning, the overall model trend has been to shift the storm slightly to the west. However, the most reliable forecast model, the ECMWF, keeps the storm in about the same place as it was forecasted to be yesterday. The ECMWF is entering its so called "deadly" range where it locks on to the track of a storm and the track of the storm ends up being very similar to what is forecasted. Therefore, I tend to favor the usage of that model when forecasting what will happen with this storm. Of course, there is some uncertainty as always when forecasting 3 days out and the ECWMF still has a shot at tracking the storm further west during its next two runs. However, I feel it is more likely that the other models adjusted the low too far to the west, and will end up adjusting back to the more easterly track of the ECMWF.

Here's an image of where the ECMWF forecasts the storm to be Thursday Morning:



Squinting, one can see that the low pressure is forecast to be around Buffalo Thursday Morning. Compared with yesterday's position, the track of the ECMWF hasn't changed much at all, and I will therefore stick to my forecast of rain Wednesday Night changing over to snow shortly after midnight before ending shortly after 12 pm on Thursday. As for accumulation amounts, I would expect 2-3" of heavy, wet snow. The main accumulation will be on cold/grassy surfaces, and even on those surfaces the snow won't accumulate right away because of ground temperatures still being above freezing (the delayed accumulation usually happens because of this with every first snowfall). On roadways, I would be surprised to see much more than just slush accumulating. So obviously there will be no snow day with this storm, but it should still offer up the first accumulating snow of the season and make driving a mess Thursday Morning.