Last winter, the Washington area saw many promising snow chances fade away as storm systems approached the region. This winter is picking right back up where the last left off.
The possibility of up to an inch or so of snow on Wednesday has evaporated and now we’ll be lucky to even see a few wet flakes.
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Today’s models rang the death knell for receiving measurable snow. Most now show little or no precipitation falling over the region Wednesday.
The zone of low pressure that the models predicted would pass to our south was always a little too weak and offshore for us to feel confident that we’d see much snow. Today’s models are even weaker and farther east with the low pressure zone and have taken meaningful precipitation off the table.
The dearth of precipitation will allow daytime temperatures to rise into the 40s. So even if we were to get a shower, it might be produce rain versus snow or just a sloppy mix of the two. Our guess is most in the area will see little or no precipitation except for southern Maryland and Virginia’s Northern Neck where temperatures will probably be warm enough to produce rain or a mix rather than snow.
Both this winter and last, we’ve had La Ni？a conditions which tend to limit available precipitation in storm systems approaching the region. Many models appear to have a bias in overpredicting precipitation totals more than a day or two before a storm system moves in. Then, the day before as better data becomes available, they correct for this error forcing meteorologists to adjust forecasts downward.
We actually have attempted to account for this bias by being conservative in our snowfall forecasts but apparently not conservative enough. We’ll need to keep this in mind for forecasts in the coming months.
Up next? 70 degree-warmth Saturday and abnormally mild conditions on balance through the middle of December. Sorry snow lovers.
Abnormally warm weather to dominate Lower 48 through winter solstice