Low pressure continues to move north-northeastward off the coast. The storm is now located east of Atlantic City. Up to 5 inches have fallen so far in southern Connecticut. Snow is falling throughout the New York City area with temperatures near 30 degrees. It is 31 in Central Park, 32 in Bronx, 31 at Newark and 31 in Belmar, NJ. The snow is expected to continue through midnight. Radar shows an extensive area of precipitation from Maine to North Carolina. There are some breaks now forming in the snow over New Jersey which indicates that the snow is beginning to taper off. There are still some heavier bands of snow that will move through the area over the next few hours before the snow ends around midnight. Models had kept the precipitation off the coast for all of last week through Thursday morning. But by Friday, the NAM began to bring light precipitation inland. It was a large change in the precipitation pattern in a short period of time. There is a very strong Jetstream across the Northeast which provided strong uplift as low pressure drifted northeastward passing to the 70/40 (lat./long) benchmark. This benchmark location has been used to determine if a coastal storm in the New York City area is moving either too far eastward or westward to produce heavy snowfall.
George Wright is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist for Wright Weather Consulting, LLC. Visit our website at WrightWeather.com. Follow George Wright on Twitter @gwweather.
