12:30 PM | Accumulating snow Sunday PM on the order of 2-4 inches in the Philly metro region

Discussion

Accumulating snow Sunday PM Our active weather pattern continues from this weekend right into the second half of the upcoming week. Today features a relatively weak upper-level disturbance in the southern branch of the jet stream that is generating low pressure off of the Mid-Atlantic coastline. This system will only brush the I-95 corridor with snow this afternoon and little in the way of accumulations. The heaviest precipitation today associated with this southern system will stay well to the southeast of the I-95 corridor. Another upper-level disturbance will ride this way on Sunday from our west in the northern branch of the jet stream. This system has more punch than today’s southern system and the result will likely be accumulating snow for much of the Mid-Atlantic region. As this northern system approaches the Mid-Atlantic coast on Sunday it will intensify somewhat and snow should break out during the afternoon hours. Snow should then continue well into the evening in many I-95 corridor locations and it could actually come down hard at times causing some slick road conditions. In the I-95 corridor from DC-to-Philly-to-NYC, the timing for the snow on Sunday is roughly between 2 and 9PM with 2-4 inches of accumulation by late evening in the Philly metro region and 1-3" in and around the NYC metro region. In the DC metro region, there will be slightly less in the way of total precipitation amounts and also some "precipitation-type mixing" issues; consequently, snow accumulations will be on the lighter side with perhaps little or nothing in the District and an inch or two across the northern suburbs.

Looking ahead to the next threat and it's a big one Dry and very cold weather will dominate the scene in the Mid-Atlantic from Monday into Wednesday with single digit low temperatures possible once again in much of the region. There continue to be signs that a strong wave of low pressure will pull out of the Deep South by Wednesday night or Thursday of next week and head towards the east coast with lots of available moisture. As a result, the threat for significant snow, ice or rain will likely return to the region during the second half of next week, but it is too early for details on this one so stay tuned.

An update on the western US From very dry-to-very wet across northern California…there can be between 6 and 10 inches of rain in the northern half of California over the next 5 days or so. In addition, higher elevation locations out west from California to Colorado can receive several feet of snow in the next several days - particularly hard hit will be the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.

Saturday solar update on the "Climate Info" page.