The first snowstorm of December and the largest snowstorm of the young meteorological winter season is wrapping up today, bringing one more day of accumulating snow to New England before exiting the coast.
The strong low pressure system responsible for the wintry weather was centered to the east of Cape Cod early this morning. The low will continue to move northeast toward Nova Scotia, Canada today. As the snow wraps up in northern and central New England, low clouds will clear out of the northern Mid Atlantic area, While the morning will feature some sunshine in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, there will be an increase in high clouds from the west during the afternoon. As northwest winds move in behind the departing storm, scattered high clouds will fill in the northeast; lake effect snows are also possible in typical lake effect snow areas down-wind of the lakes. Winds could be come gusty at times; light and variable winds this morning will speed up to around 15mph with gusts of 25-30mph.
The storm started as a “bomb cyclone” in the western United States and reformed over time, ultimately becoming a coastal storm off the New England coast. More than 2 feet of snow fell in the Rockies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend; more than 2 feet also fell in portions of Upstate New York. Snow will continue to accumulate in portions of New England today, inching some locations closer to 30″ storm totals.
One place that didn’t get as much snow as expected was southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. A band of heavy snow was expected to form over eastern Pennsylvania/western New Jersey but instead developed 40 miles east, bringing portions of eastern New Jersey, especially northeastern New Jersey, more significant snow throughout the day yesterday. With eastern Pennsylvania robbed of moisture and atmospheric energy due to that snow band to its easy, temperatures were marginal to support much in the way of any accumulating snow there.
Despite the bust in portions of the Mid Atlantic, snow totals across the Great Lakes Region and New England were on-target, kicking off the meteorological winter season with its first big dump of heavy snow.
