The AI ensemble guidance has locked onto a high-confidence solution for next weekend, signaling what could be a benchmark winter storm for the Northeast corridor. We are tracking a textbook "Miller A" cyclogenesis event driven by a massive, anomalous ridge spiking along the West Coast (+PNA).
This immense ridging in the West is dislodging a potent piece of the Polar Vortex, which is progged to dig into the Tennessee Valley and phase negatively with rich subtropical moisture. The pattern recognition is striking: our internal analogs are heavily weighted toward the Blizzard of 1996 and the January 2016 event, both of which featured similar blocking high pressure over Greenland (-NAO) that locked the storm against the coast.
PROJECTED STORM TOTALS (AI MEAN):
- Boston (Logan): 32.4 Inches
- New York City (Central Park): 23.8 Inches
- Philadelphia: 19.8 Inches
Expect rates to exceed 3"/hour at the height of the storm Saturday night. This is a "full latitude" trough amplifying, and with the cold air supply firmly established by the antecedent high pressure, mixing issues will be non-existent north of the Mason-Dixon line.