We have some very light showers across the island this morning. Those will dissipate before another round of light rain this afternoon. Otherwise, it will be cloudy and chilly today with highs barely above 40°. Skies will clear overnight, setting up for a sunny but chilly Saturday.
Clouds will return tomorrow afternoon and rain will quickly overspread the region by nightfall. The rain will be steady and could be heavy at times overnight into Sunday morning. Rainfall estimates are .5" - 1". Skies will partially clear on Sunday after lunchtime and temperatures will rise all the way to 60° for a short-lived warm period. Monday will remain above average (50s) but return to below average territory (40s) Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Flip-Flop Continues
The models continue to do their dance this morning. The Euro has now backed off and is keeping the storm out to sea, while the GFS thinks it will come dangerously close to the coast. With such a wide variance, I don't think they will agree on anything until later in the weekend at the earliest. There's a chance this remains a close call into next week. The players are going to be there, and I think at this point it is the timing that the models are having a tough time with. We will have two pieces of energy, a coastal low to the south and a Canadian clipper coming in from the northwest. In order for the coastal low to deepen and come further west, we need it to phase with this clipper. With sufficient cold air in place and the center of low pressure remaining at or southeast of the 70°/40° benchmark, moderate to heavy snow would be possible at the coast.
This is if everything broke perfectly. There is a chance if they phase well enough that the coastal storm could get pulled so far in that it would bring up milder air and it would be a rain event for Long Island. There will be lots of chatter over the weekend about this. There will be model runs that may show the storm blowing up and a direct Long Island hit, and there will be runs that show a complete miss (I would assume the former will be the ones posted all over Facebook). My advice? Keep this possibility in the back of your head, but don't worry about anything. Enjoy the weekend! If we are still talking about this on Monday, then we will scramble the fighters. -Geoff
