The image you see above is the European forecast model prediction or output for the possibility of a so called "Perfect Storm," Hurricane/Nor'easter hybrid. With a central pressure of 933.7mb it is only about 6 hours away from landfall in New Jersey late next Monday night. Implications? Hurricane force wind gusts, storm surge (under a full moon tide) and heavy rain on the east side of the cold front. The west side of the cold front gets interesting! Heavy Heavy snow accumulations , paralyzing for some spots, all under blizzard conditions.
So what are the conditions? Our trough from the Northstate, that has brought rain and snow the last few days begins to barrel across the country. You can pick up the trough diving down into the Northern Plains/Great Lakes region by Saturday morning. Off the coast of Florida you can see Hurricane Sandy moving north, northwest.
By Sunday evening the trough/cold front grabs what's left of Tropical Sandy and begins to "Phase" it into what we call an extratropical system. Basically a switch from a warm core system to a cold core system or winter storm. This will then intensify it and slingshot back into the trough which unfortunately would be the Northeast/New England coastline.
Another look at predicted precipitation from the European forecast model as it makes landfall late Monday evening.
his image above is what we call an Ensemble Mean through the European forecast model. Basically we take the European model and change a lot of parameters, environmental conditions of what could or couldn't happen. This gets run dozens of times and then averaged out. This is what the average looks like by Monday evening. You can see the low landfalling right around Long Island, NY.
All the big Operational Medium Range Forecast models do ensemble means. This is the Canadian model you can see the landfalling system a tad bit north, closer to New England.
Lastly the American model known as the GFS. This is the ensemble average and you can also see a strike around the Northeast coast.
This is what is concerning for that area. When you see several operational model runs along with an agreement of several ensembles you need to start play close attention to potentially devastating storm.
