Nightmare Storm Coming To New England Coast, Vermont Gets Ugly, Too

From Twitter: @whoizmark enjoys the snow falling this
morning in Tallahassee, Florida of all places. 

The media is in a weather frenzy now, and with good reason. Most of the news sites are leading with what they're all calling a bomb storm that is going to sock the East Coast.

I've been talking about this storm for days, and it's becoming a reality. It's still going to stay offshore, but will come close enough to the East Coast from Florida to Maine to really raise some havoc.

They're calling it a bomb storm because it will undergo what us weather geeks call bombogenesis. It's going to intensify and escalate super fast, like a bomb going off. I'll go over the impacts south to north below. Note to my Vermont readers that there is a section below on what forecasters expect out of this for the Green Mountain State.

SOUTHERN NIGHTMARE

Since the storm is heading to the north and northeast, first stop is Florida, where mixed precipitation is falling in the northern part of that state, and winter storm warnings are still flying there. There are lots of videos now flying around the internet of snow falling in Tallahassee, Florida.

Tbe expected path of this storm is well off the coast, which
normally would mean this would be no big deal. But the storm
is so strong and so huge in area that it is and will cause
lots of big probems from Florida to New England and on
into southeastern Canada.

Coastal Georgia is likely to get hit hard. The Weather Channel said the snowiest day in Savannah, Georgia history had 3.6 inches of snow. They're forecasting up to six inches of snow for Savannah, though the National Weather Service says it will be mainly freezing rain there. Either way, horrible.

There might be as much as a quarter to a half inch of ice accumulation in northern Florida and southern Georgia. That much ice is enough to cause real problems here in northern New England. Imagine that part of the country!

And they don't have ice removal trucks and salt down there. They're going to have to wait for a warm up in a few days for the ice to melt.

For the record at 9 a.m. this morning, normally mild Savannah was reporting a temperature of 28 degrees with freezing rain. Sidewalks and streets in Tallahassee were iced over this morning. It even snowed 30 miles offshore of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico last night, which is really something almost unprecedented. Parts of Interstate 10 are closed due to ice. Interstate 10 is the furthest south east to west Interstate in the U.S.

Because the storm is staying offshore, the severe effects of this storm will hug the coast from Georgia on up to the Mid-Atlantic states. In the south, freezing rain will ice things up, and the ice won't go away anytime soon as the cold air surges in behind the storm today and tomorrow.

Along the Mid-Atlantic Coast and along Interstate 95, it'll be a mess of powdery, badly wind driven snow. Travel and commutes will be a nightmare. Closest to the coast, around the Norfolk and Virginia Beach, a blizzard warning is up for winds of 50 mph and whiteout conditions tomorrow. They're warning folks in that area that travel will be impossible, and to be prepared for power failures amid cold and falling temperatures.

Further north into New Jersey and the New York City metro area, forecasters are pulling out their hair trying to determine how much snow will fall on this heavily populated area. If the storm makes a slight jog to the west, they get a lot more than forecast. A slight jog to the east puts them pretty much out of the snow zone.

All this time, the storm will be bombing out and roaring toward New England.

NEW ENGLAND DISASTER?

Normally, when a nor'easter stays as far off the coast as this one will, the effects are only moderate along the New England coast. Generally, this path for a storm would cause some minor coastal flooding, a few power outages from wind and maybe a half foot of snow.

But this storm is so vast and so strong, the New England coast is in for a real pummeling. Here's something to give you an idea how huge the storm's circulation is: The eastern extent of its circulation will be in the central Atlantic, halfway to Europe. The very western edge of its circulation will be somewhere around Iowa. Yeah, that bad.

This forecast map depicts the worst case scenario
for this storm, bringing it very close to the New
England coast. However, this is the NAM computer
model, which is rather unreliable. Most forecasts
take the storm further off the coast than this. 

Plus, the expected track of the storm keeps getting nudged a bit westward closer to New England. Which would increase the impacts of this storm on the region. All this means that in this case, coastal New England is in big trouble.

 There is a blizzard warning for eastern Massachusetts, the immediate coastline of New Hampshire and southwestern Maine, and in Downeast Maine.

The storm is, again, far enough off the coast so the actual snowfall totals won't break any records. Areas near and to the south and east of Boston could easily get a foot or more, but they've seen that before.

But the real story is going to be the wind and the coastal flooding. In some areas on an near Cape Cod the snow will become wet and heavy, and maybe even change to rain for a time. Combine this with winds of up to 70 mph, and you have a recipe for widespread power outages.

Then consider the frigid air that will surge in behind the storm. Imagine having no power with daytime highs of near 10 and lows of near five below, as is expected Friday and Saturday in southeastern Massachusetts.

The real damage from this storm looks like it will be coastal flooding. East and north facing coasts, especially south of Boston, are most vulnerable to this thing. First of all, we're starting with astronomical tides that are above normal on Thursday, with or without a storm.

Then factor in a storm surge of two to three feet. Then consider the waves generated by a long fetch of gales over the Atlantic. You'll have some terrible, battering waves. Also, a lot of ice has formed along the coast with this recent cold wave. Chunks of ice will become additional battering rams during the storm.

The Boston area National Weather Service is expecting structural damage, especially in and near Plymouth, out on the Cape near Dennis, and maybe around Scituate.

At least this is a fairly quick mover, so it won't linger and cause additional damage like the Perfect Storm of 1991 and the Great Blizzard of 1978. Still, this one is very dangerous for the coast.

One other note of caution: One forecast model, called the NAM, brings the storm much closer to New England on Thursday than the other models. If the NAM bears out, the conditions will be much worse than even I've described above. However, the NAM has been a pretty unreliable model, so most forecasters are dismissing that. At least for now.

VERMONT IMPACTS

Here in Vermont, this storm won't be a disaster, but it will be awful and potentially dangerous. Snow will break out amid increasing north winds on Thursday. Since the storm is moving more westward than forecasters thought a few days ago, we'll get a bit more snow than earlier forecasts indicated.

Winter storm watches have been extended westward to the New Hampshire, Vermont border, while the entire state of Vermont is under a winter weather advisory. Vermont will probably get somewhere in the neighborhood of three to eight inches of snow with this, as forecasts now stand.

There's a decent chance there might be a sharp gradient in snow totals in Vermont from east to west, with eight inches or even more near the Connecticut River Valley and perhaps as little as one or two inches near Lake Champlain. That's an uncertain forecast, because precisely where the heaviest snow will fall is anyone's guess at this point.

Wherever the heaviest snow falls, we're not getting all that much by Vermont standards, but the winds will really pick up Thursday afternoon and night, and on Friday. The snow is going to be very light and fluffy, so it will blow around A LOT. There will be whiteouts on the highways at times, and the snow will very quickly drift, which means it'll be hard to keep it off the roads for more than say, five minutes.

As advertised, the temperatures will really take a plunge as well, going below zero sometimes early Friday and staying there until Sunday afternoon.

Wind chills will be ridiculous and downright dangerous, as winds could easily gust to 40 mph or more, especially Thursday night and part of Friday. There could be scattered power failures due to the wind, which is dangerous in such cold conditions. But the good news is I don't think we'll have long lasting or widespread power failures here in Vermont.

It will get insanely cold at night, with widespread teens to near 20 below zero, plus gusty winds Friday night and early Saturday. Late Saturday night and around dawn on Sunday, the winds will be lighter, but temperatures will be in the 20s below zero regionwide, with numerous 30s below popping up in many northern valleys.

This isn't going to be a picnic for our friends in Canada, either. Enviroment Canada is warning people in Nova Scotia and surrounding provinces of damaging storm surges, near hurricane force winds and very heavy snow.

LOOKING AHEAD

After this storm goes by, we'll get the cold, but the Arctic chill will begin to come to an abrupt end starting Sunday afternoon. By Tuesday, temperatures in some areas of New England, including Vermont, could get above freezing. That, of course raises the spectre of possible mixed precipitation and rain, which would create its own new mess. Stay tuned on that one.