AccuWeather's Jon Porter warns of stormy weather bringing rain and snow, which will significantly impact hundreds of millions of people who plan to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday this week.
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00:00There.
00:01Oh, that looks pretty.
00:02You know I love this location.
00:03You do.
00:04Best location in the nation?
00:05Yep.
00:06That's what I would say.
00:07Okay.
00:08I think you say that about Cleveland, too, though, don't you?
00:09Well, yeah.
00:10We mix and match that, I guess.
00:11Yeah.
00:12It's got a good ring to it.
00:13I mean, this looks like a snow globe.
00:14Literally a snow globe.
00:15You take it, you shake it, and that's what the flakes look like coming down.
00:17They're coming down fast, and they're pretty big.
00:19And you ain't seen nothing yet in this area.
00:21You wait until a week from now.
00:22All right.
00:23Joining me right now is AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.
00:26You know, John, Paul Pastelok sounded the alarm for this cold air mass weeks ago.
00:32We were talking with meteorologist Joe Lumberg, the crystal ball, last week about this cold
00:37air mass.
00:38You and I were looking at this over the weekend, and I think we have some important talking
00:42points that we want to get to about the first week in December.
00:45It's a big deal, a big shock to the system here, coming with widespread cold over much
00:50of the central and eastern part of the United States, a true taste of January, and it's
00:55going to come in multiple waves, Bernie, that will be accompanied by very significant
00:59lake effect snow downwind of the lakes.
01:02Now, the one thing that you know I've been obsessing about is that typically when you
01:08get this cold air along the east coast, at some point there's going to be an attempt
01:15for a coastal storm.
01:17That's the way it happens.
01:18Now, we have a low confidence that right now, but that is something that we're going to
01:24continue to keep an eye on.
01:25I think, John, if it would happen, it would be late next week.
01:30That's right, and that might be when the pattern starts to flip to some moderation of this
01:34cold air.
01:35Oftentimes, when the pattern is changing, that's when you look for a big storm.
01:39But the reason that you've been obsessing about this, and we've gotten a few text messages
01:42from you over the weekend about this, is the fact that whenever you have such a sharp variation
01:48in temperature setting up along the eastern seaboard of the United States, that's a known
01:52storm highway.
01:54So, low confidence, but it's something for you to continue to monitor here at AccuWeather.com
01:57over the coming days, but high confidence levels on the widespread cold and the lake
02:02effect.
02:03All right, let's talk about our next storm here, John.
02:05Here it is on the satellite picture.
02:07It's this upper low off the California coast.
02:10Now, I talked about this just a few minutes ago.
02:13I want to talk about it again.
02:14Let's track this energy here, John, because we have something called the Norm MacDonald
02:19a legendary forecaster in southern New England, and his rule is, and I know you know from
02:26being in southern New England, that is a name that still resonates in southeastern New England.
02:31Where the storm enters along the west coast, it usually exits along the east coast.
02:36It's a great rule before, and this is from a time where the computer forecast guidance
02:40wasn't as sophisticated.
02:42Where the storm comes in the west coast is oftentimes the latitude that it exits the
02:46east coast.
02:47So that gives us more confidence that a storm might try to exit toward Virginia.
02:52Yeah, let's talk about that, John.
02:54So when you look at the scenarios, these are the range of possibilities here.
02:58Now, both scenarios have showers and thunderstorms and some severe weather across the south,
03:04but it's the snow part where the weaker and stronger, that's where they differ.
03:09Yes, if the storm is stronger, Bernie, as you mentioned, we're going to have a skiff
03:13of snow on the northern side of this from parts of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes to
03:17northern New England.
03:18However, if the storm is a little bit less intense, it's going to track further to the
03:23south and there will be very little snow on the northern edge of it.
03:26This is on the Wednesday and Thursday time period, which of course is especially impactful
03:31since this is a big time for holiday travel.
03:33You know, and based on taking maybe a blend of some of the computer models and the old
03:40Norm MacDonald rules, we call it, you'll notice where we're exiting that storm, John, right
03:44across Virginia.
03:45So that does mean that there's going to be some snow in the Midwest.
03:50The real question is, is New England, where the cold air is deeper, I think there's at
03:54least the potential, west of 95, there could be several inches of snow.
03:58Yes, from the Berkshires up into parts of northern New England where that deeper cold
04:02air, that would take a storm track closer to the coast.
04:06Stay with us here at AccuWeather over through the next several days, we'll keep you updated
04:09on that.
04:10That's the greatest risk for the heaviest snow.
04:12Back here toward the Great Lakes, this would be more like coating to an inch or two likely
04:16in some areas should that northern scenario materialize.
04:19And as we mentioned, waves of cold, January cold following this storm, tremendous amounts
04:24of lake effect, a lot going on behind this storm.
04:28AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter, John, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather
04:32Early.