About That Mega Bomb Of A Storm That's (Maybe) Coming

You are probably hearing a lot about a huge storm that might affect the Northeast toward midweek.  

The Superstorm of 1993 was a "bomb" that caused havoc
all over the eastern United States. Another huge bomb
might hit parts of New England and Atlantic Canada
midweek, but won't affect nearly as huge an
area as the 1993 storm.  

The meteorologists and weather geeks like me are TOTALLY in a tizzy over this one because it will be what's known as a bomb. And an incredibly big bomb, one that us weather people have rarely seen.

A bomb is the term we use for a storm that develops and grows and intensifies explosively. It usually applies to nor'easters but can describe many rapidly developing storms.

A bomb can grow from a piddling mediocre storm with a routine amount of rain, snow and wind to something that creates gales and havoc and coastal flooding and deep snow and torrential downpours and lightning in just a matter of hours.

I can hear a lot of you saying out there, "Well, that's nice, Matt. Have fun with your little weather bomb, but what does this have to do with me?"

Well, maybe a lot. Or maybe not. Let me explain.

We do know there's going to be that bomb off the coast. But the way the forecasts have the path of the storm going, just a little variance in exactly where it travels will make a big difference on how bad the storm will get, especially in New England.

American forecast models have it going pretty far out in the ocean. That means Cape Cod and the Islands, and probably eastern Maine would be in for gales, with gusts almost to hurricane force and lots of snow.

Under this scenario, once you get up to Boston and points north and west, the weather would be unpleasant and cold and windy during the storm but nothing extreme.

The European model seems to want to bring the storm maybe 50 miles closer to the coast than the American forecast model. That would bring the strong gales, the heavy snow, blizzardy weather basically, into many of the big cities and towns in the eastern half of New England, and spread some wind and snow all the way into southern Vermont and into central New Hampshire.

Under the European model scenario, Cape Cod and the Islands would get hurricane force winds, which is never a good thing.

By the way, if you live in places like Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, Canada, you're screwed. I'd start getting ready for a really bad storm now if you live in those regions.

This storm would come through Tuesday night and Wednesday, so we have a few more rounds of computer forecasting models to go so we can refine exactly where our bomb will go.

Will it just throw a little bit of shrapnel New England's way, or will the region get the full force of the blast? Stay tuned.