After a Friday of snow & ice, things have generally quieted down Saturday. It’s cold and cloudy, but shy of a few flurries flying around otherwise uneventful.
Temperatures will slowly climb into Sunday morning and continue climbing from there. That’s a good thing as we await our next surge of precipitation. While it’s close, we think temperatures will sufficiently warm above freezing in time for the onset of precip to arrive in the form of cold rain Sunday afternoon. This will be a steady, soaking rain that will continue into Sunday night and early Monday morning before the cold front blasts through. All-in, it’s likely many of us will pick up at least an inch of fresh water. Combined with snowmelt (temps ahead of the front could briefly warm to 50°), this will soak our ground and lead to some limited localized flooding. We’ll come back to that wet ground in a moment.
As the cold front passes early Monday, temperatures will rapidly fall as lake effect snow showers begin to fire. Guidance today is aggressive with the strength of the parent low to our north. Not only is it particularly deep, it’s in a location climatologically favorable for strong to damaging winds. High Wind Watches are up from Rochester westward Monday in anticipation of wind gusts of 60+ mph.
Normally, gusts of this caliber would result in at least some downed branches and power outages. Given the prior heavy rain and snowmelt, saturated soil will make shallow-rooted trees more susceptible to being uprooted. This likely increases the risk for downed trees and outages and is something we’re closely monitoring as new model runs come in.
Those powerful winds will generate monster waves on the Great Lakes. Maximum wave heights on the open water of Lake Ontario (not the waves you’ll see on the shoreline) will exceed 25 feet and could approach 30 feet. That’s quite impressive and a testament to just how strong this storm system is anticipated to be…