It appears the area will have its first winter weather event of the season. While I am not expecting much accumulation, it does appear rather likely that we will have some frozen precipitation. We have a rather cold airmass overhead now, and will have a storm moving into the area from the south. The big question with these events are how fast the warmer air of the northerly moving storm can overcome the cold air in place. Typically, with these types of storms, you will see precipitation to the south, but it will crawl on a northern advancement. This is due to the evaporational cooling in the upper atmosphere. Our cold airmass will take some time to saturate before precipitation starts to fall to the ground. Precipitation will start in the form of snow and will change over to sleet and freezing rain and then all rain.
As of now, I think the snow starts in South Jersey late morning and then into the PHL - Trenton corridor in the early afternoon. Places in Northern NJ may have to wait until evening time for the precipitation to start falling. I expect a coating in areas of Southern NJ (away from the coast) and a coating to as much as 2" around C NJ. My other thinking with these types of storms is that a changeover usually occurs prior to the modeled time. So, a quicker changeover would lead to lesser accumulations, but travel could be just as bad if not worse. I think S NJ goes over to rain by late afternoon, CNJ by evening and Northern NJ overnight. Eventually, the rain will encompass all areas and will quickly wash away any accumulations.
After this storm, we turn our attention to another round of precipitation on Tuesday and Wednesday. More to come on that after tomorrow.
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