7:00 AM | ****Weekend accumulating snow, painful cold, dangerous sub-zero wind chills with potentially damaging wind gusts to 55 mph or so****

6-Day NYC Forecast

Today

Mostly sunny, windy, bitter cold, highs in the middle teens with sub-zero wind chills

Tonight

Partly cloudy, winds die down rapidly to calm conditions, very cold, lows in the lower teens

Saturday

Thickening clouds, becoming windy, cold, but not as extreme as today, snow developing during the afternoon hours, upper 20’s

Saturday Night

Occasional snow, becoming extremely windy, bitter cold by morning, snow accumulations by late night on the order of 2-5 inches with blowing and drifting of snow after midnight, low temperatures not far from 10 degrees

Sunday

The coldest day of the year so far…snow still possible early, painfully cold, extremely windy with dangerous sub-zero wind chills, potential damaging wind gusts to 55 mph or so, considerable blowing and drifting of snow, highs struggle to reach the lower teens

Monday

A bitter cold start near 0 degrees; mostly sunny, breezy, still very cold with afternoon highs struggling to reach 20 degrees

Tuesday

Becoming cloudy, quite cold, snow possible late in the day or at night, upper 20's

Wednesday

Snow possible, windy, cold, upper 20's

Discussion

Arctic air has arrived and today promises to be a brutally cold day despite plenty of sunshine along with sub-zero wind chills as winds remain quite strong through much of the day. The winds will relax rapidly this evening, but before this Arctic air mass even has a chance to modify, another one will be fast-approaching as we begin the weekend. By late tomorrow, a clipper system and its associated Arctic front will be dropping southeastward across the Great Lakes region right towards the I-95 corridor. Snow will break out in the afternoon hours and continue at night with 2-5 inches likely by early Sunday.

This clipper low pressure system will explode off the Mid-Atlantic coastline late tomorrow and tomorrow night once it passes over the relatively warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. This explosive development will lead to a tremendously sharp pressure gradient which will lead to extreme wind gusts around here by late Saturday night and early Sunday on the order of 55 mph or higher. The last thing we need on Sunday - the coldest day of the year so far - is for power outages to develop, but that is definitely on the table for this event so prepare as well as possible. The cold on Sunday will be downright painful and the high winds will cause dangerously low sub-zero wind chill values. This rapidly intensifying storm will produce significant snow once again for New England, and in some ways it will actually be nastier than recent record-setting storms because of the extreme cold and wind that is expected.

Single digits are possible for lows around here on Sunday morning, highs will struggle on Sunday afternoon to even reach the lower teens, and then overnight low temperatures by early Monday morning could drop to right near the 0 degree mark. Another accumulating snow threat will come late Tuesday into Wednesday, but that storm track is still uncertain and it could still end up not being a big problem around here. However, what is certain is that more brutal cold will follow by the middle and latter part of next week - perhaps even on the levels with this Sunday's extreme cold. How about some good news...pitchers and catchers report in just 6 days.

Video

httpv://youtu.be/OQtfYgMWr3I