monsoonmartin

"Don’t call it a comeback / I been here for years / Rockin’ my peers and puttin’ suckas in fear / Makin’ the tears rain down like a monsoon / Listen to the bass go boom / Explosion, overpowerin’ / Over the competition, I’m towerin’."

That’s LL Cool J, right there.  Ladies Love Cool James.  24 years ago.  Man.

Anyway, guys, thank you, for real, for your emails and words of concern when I said I was taking a hiatus.  What I’ve realized, though, is that I am a forecaster.  And forecasters gotta forecast.  It’s not even like a choice.  It’s like … a destiny and shit.

So there’s a low pressure system due to track up the east coast Tuesday night into Wednesday, which is the busiest travel day of the year.  It’s a Nor’easter, and rumors are swirling that it could produce eight to twelve inches of accumulation and travel miseries aplenty.

Back up the wagon, there, Hoss.  Put the horses back in the barn.  Pry your chaps out your crack.  So forth.

Here’s what I think:

Precipitation starts as rain on Wednesday morning about 7-9am.  Surface temperatures will be in the mid 30s at this point, rising to the upper 30s by noon.  Then temperatures will begin to fall; how quickly they do so and how pervasive that cold is in the atmosphere will determine how nasty it will get.  (Storm track as well.  This will all become clearer in the next few days.)

I think we begin seeing wet snow mixing in by 2pm.  Travel through mid-afternoon will be mostly problem-free.  The rain, which will be heavy at times, may cause some delays (particularly in roadways prone to flooding and for airlines, where low ceilings could pose a problem), but generally, travel should be fine.

Even when wet snow begins to mix in with the rain—and even when it begins to proper snow, as the cold air aloft makes its way down the column of air—the roads will just be wet.  Any afternoon accumulations will be on grassy and unpaved surfaces.

Wednesday evening is when you don’t want to be out and about so much.  From 6pm to about 11pm it will be snowing, and it will be a wet, obnoxious snow that will reduce visibility to about 2 ½ feet.  So travel delays on Wednesday from dinnertime on will be fairly widespread (driving or flying).

And then the wet snow tapers to flurries and snow showers, ending by about 6am Thursday.

Accumulations:

• South Jersey, Delaware – an inch of accumulated wet snow at most
• Philly, central Jersey – a wet inch; two inches at most
• Chester County, Berks, Allentown, Montgomery County – one to three inches
• Chance of cancellation Wednesday: 6%
• Chance of early dismissal Wednesday: 18%

Full forecast for the coming week (and beyond) appears below.  But if you really only care about Wednesday’s thing, then stop reading.

This is David Hasselhoff (right) with Kid Cudi. Kid Cudi is not LL Cool J, but he is another rapper, so that counts.Monday 11/24: rain overnight, heavy at times, tapering by 8 or 9am.  Temperatures rising into the upper 60s behind that front.  Windy, too, in the afternoon, but it won’t be a brisk type of wind from the northwest; it will be a soupy wind from the south-southeast, like a mouthbreathing creeper respiring on your neck on the subway.

Tuesday 11/25: sunny and seasonable.  Getting windier and chillier as the day goes on.  Early high near 50, but then fall through the 40s into the 30s in the evening.

Wednesday 11/26: the thing I talked about above with the rain and the wet snow and whatnot.  Look at it.

Thursday 11/27: Some flurries possible early, then turning sunny and breezy.  High about 40.

Friday 11/28: Cloudy to start, then clearing.  Highs only in the mid 30s.

The weekend: highs in the lower 40s.  Overnight lows in the 20s.

Do you see any snow on the horizon? Nah.  I actually see a bit of a warming trend, with highs in the 40s or even 50s for the first half of December.  Next windows I am looking at include December 14-15 and December 20-21.  And December 24-25!

Stay tuned for updates!

Monsoon