A White Christmas After All?

EURO snowfall totals Christmas Day

While there has been a lot of brown ground in 2012 (both early and now late) mother nature is sending a Christmas snowstorm to New England.  A piece of energy from the trough off the West Coast will combine with energy streaming out of Southwest Canada to form an Alberta Clipper.  Clippers tend to bring light snows to the Midwest and Great Lakes but they tend to bring Arctic conditions behind them.  This is important for another storm Wednesday and Thursday; more on that later.

Weatherbell EURO 2 M Tmax Christmas Day 1 PM

Bitter cold will invade the upper plains for Christmas Day.  There will be plenty of cold for snow in the Northeast.   Here is the North American Model forecast for 11 AM EST Christmas Day

NAM snowfall Christmas Day 12z 12/22 run

Here is the 8 day forecast for Worcester, projected by the American Global Forecast System (GFS)

Graphics produced by Dr. Ryan Maue and Weatherbell

And the EURO forecast for Worcester

Goes out 10 days

EURO is a bit warmer than the GFS but still puts out close to 20 inches of snow for portions of Southern New England

240 hour snowfall accumulations EURO

This is not snow depth as some will melt and compact but you get the general idea; winter has begun and soon will begin her assault on Southern New England.  There is a potential major storm during the middle of next week, but with predictability low at this range I won't go into specifics.