WEEKEND COLD & LAKE EFFECT SNOW

Written by: Brian Neudorff

Based on the comments I have read from Bob's post last night (COLD PATTERN SETTING UP?) I think there has been some miscommunication or a misunderstanding on our forecast for this weekend. A few of the commenters are suggesting we aren't mentioning lake effect for this weekend in our forecast but I know that's not true.

You can even go back to my post yesterday morning (NEW YEARS SNOW, MORE COLD) and I even stated when it looked like the surface storm would back west, "This could produce some decent snow for our region along with some lake effect or even lake enhanced snows across our area. I also can tell you that lake effect snow was in my forecast this morning for the weekend and was in Bob's forecast from last night.

Cold air will arrive across Western New York Friday night into the weekend with the core of the coldest air forecasted to arrive across the region Saturday afternoon (see above graphic from the 12z run of the NAM forecast model at 850mb or 5,000 ft.) This along with a WNW to NW flow and the location of the upper level low means we will see lake effect snow bands that will continue through the weekend and for those who were asking in the previous post, yes this could mean that lake effect could continue into the first part of next week.

At this point being 3 to 4 days out we can't give you any amounts or pinpoint the locations of where the snow bands will set up but the scenario does look like we will get some lake effect snow that lasts through the weekend and possibly into next week as the cold air lingers across the Great Lakes and Northeast.