Daily Archives: February 24, 2015

Another Norlun Trough Set To Graze The Area Tonight

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Hello everyone!

Special update this evening to cover another Norlun trough type setup that looks to bring another round of light snow tonight and into early tomorrow morning. While the heavy snow bands usually associated with Norlun troughs will remain mostly offshore, an axis of shifting winds with reasonably impressive instability and some lift too will make an appearance mainly east of Brunswick tonight into tomorrow morning.

18Z NAM Showing A Distinct Wind Shift Line (Orange Arrows/Blue Dashed Line) Over Midcoast Maine At 7 AM Tomorrow. Credit: Weatherbell
18Z NAM Showing A Distinct Wind Shift Line (Orange Arrows/Blue Dashed Line) Over Midcoast Maine At 7 AM Tomorrow. Credit: Weatherbell

A low pressure area that brought snow and ice to the southeast US will move too far offshore to bring major impacts though a Norlun trough, basically a wind shift line, will extend to the NW of the storm bringing coastal areas some snow. Snow will be concentrated between 11 tonight and 9 tomorrow morning.

hey look another norlun!!
12Z GFS Showing Intense Upward Motion Over Midcoast Maine At 7 AM Tomorrow. Credit: Accuweather

 

While snow will mainly be light, especially west of Brunswick, some moderate to even heavy bursts of snow are likely across Midcoast areas. The map above shows intense upward motion across Midcoast areas tomorrow morning signaling bands of heavy precip are possible. The areas most at risk for heavy precip will be east of the Bath/Brunswick area.

snow map 2-24

Here is the expected snowfall from this event. Not a lot, but the driveway will once again have to be cleared especially over eastern areas.

In case you were wondering if this event was a Norlun trough, Weir Lundstedt, one of the two ‘discoverers’ of the Norlun trough (he represents the ‘lun’ part of Norlun) confirmed yesterday evening this did in fact look to be a hybrid Norlun event.

-Jack

Bitter Cold Today, More Snow Arrives Tomorrow

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Hello everyone!

It’s really cold out this morning. No, really cold. Temps everywhere are below zero, even at the coast. Most areas, except for the outer islands and peninsulas are in the double digits below zero and 20 below is not uncommon region wide this morning. The good news is that the wind has died down so at least we won’t have to worry too much about wind chill. Regardless, bundle up if you must venture out this morning.

Temps will continue to drop until a little after 7 and will then rise swiftly as the high sun angle contributes to more effective heating. Some mid and upper level clouds will move in this afternoon and some coastal areas could see a low cloud deck move in as well later in the day but otherwise, another bright and blue one region wide today.

current temps

One interesting little note on our temp map this morning (off NWS’s Enhanced Data Display) are the numerous, very sharp inversions. Inversions are very shallow warm layers that basically lock away patches of air at the surface and temporarily prevent them from being influenced by the rest of the atmosphere. There are several great examples of that this morning.

Wiscasset (the -21 reading in the red circle) sits at an elevation of 53 feet while Nobleboro (the -9 reading in the red circle) sits at 126 feet. While they aren’t far apart (just 10 miles) and aren’t drastically different in elevation (a mere 73 feet), the subtle differences of their locations and especially elevations have made an enormous difference in their temps this morning. Go up in elevation just a little bit and you may find it’s quite a bit warmer this morning.

More snow is coming in tomorrow though it will be mainly light. More details in posts to come.

-Jack