Tracking the Christmas Storm

We're watching this Christmas Eve/Day winter storm pretty closely. It's still four days out and the models are coming up with very different solutions.

The ECMWF keeps the storm away

from NYC until mid-morning on Monday.

That means weekend holiday travelers

could get home on Sunday without too

much trouble. This path gives Ohio much

less snow.

The ECMWF is pushing the low-pressure center much farther south than in previous runs. It actually pushes the low off the South Carolina/Georgia coast by 12Z Sunday before bringing it back up the east coast during the day. This solution dumps a massive storm on the eastern metro areas by Monday morning.

By comparison, the GFSx moves the storm along a roughly parallel path but a few hundred miles north and nearly 24-hours more quickly. This solution has the storm sliding off the Virginia coast by 00Z Sunday, pounding the eastern metros Sunday night, and moving well east of Maine, out to sea, by Monday morning.

Both runs deepen the low as it moves through eastern seaboard. The ECMWF drops it to 971mb and the GFSx to 979. That's really, really low. A very strong storm.

The whole thing is still out of range for the RPM, the NAM and the RUC.

The GFSx puts the storm nearly on

top of NYC by 8am Sunday morning.

That would cause massive delays for

holiday travelers. This solution gives

Ohio some serious snow on Friday

night and Saturday with snow showers

continuing on Sunday.

Not surprisingly, the two solutions have very different outcomes for Ohio. A more southerly path means Ohio won't have nearly as much snow, maybe 1"-2", at best. The slightly northern path puts us in range of at least 2"-4".

They also have very different impacts on holiday travel. The slower ECMWF solution gives the east-coast airports a chance to get folks out of there on Sunday without too much trouble. The GFSx solution is likely to involve shut downs, delays and cancellations all day Sunday; a serious mess.

The only thing swaying me at the moment is the consistency of the GFSx. Its timing and path for this storm have stayed on roughly the same track for the past few days. That doesn't mean it's totally reliable, though.

The frustrating part is having to wait for a few more model runs to see if they come more into line with one another and give us a better idea of the true storm track and timing. We should have a pretty good handle on it by Wednesday night.