Hype Time For Possible Monday Storm: Don't Buy It. At Least Not Yet

 Twitter was all,  um, atwitter late this morning, at least among weather geeks concerning the latest run of the GFS, or American computer model.

All the models for a couple days now have hinted at a substantial storm off the East Coast early next week.  Some models had brought the storm within striking distance of at least eastern New England. 

One run of the American computer model this morning
depicts an intense storm hitting New England early
next week. Despite this image, don't panic. 
The forecast will change drastically, and there might
not be a storm at all. Or it might miss. Truth be
told, nobody knows yet.

But today's late morning American model depicts a tremendous storm scoring a direct strike on New England, and providing Vermont with what would amount to be a blizzard.  

Before you take off on a panic buy for bread and milk for some reason, relax.  You're going to hear a lot of chatter today about this particular prediction. Meanwhile, other computer models are taking that potential storm well off the coast. 

The disturbance that would ultimately lead to this maybe storm is still out in the Pacific Ocean as of late this morning. That means there's not a lot of data on it to feed into the computer models. Which means none of the computer models really know what they're talking about yet.

Sure, they've locked on the idea of some sort of really big storm along, or at this point more likely off the East Coast. Maybe even way, way off the East Coast. 

There will be a lot of computer models between now and early next week. It will be entertaining, and even a little informative, to watch them. 

We can keep our eye on trends, and by Saturday, I think we'll have a good and realistic handle on at least the broad brush impacts or non-impacts this storm would have. 

For now, ignore the hype, bundle up against today's frigid weather and the almost equally frigid air due later Friday through Saturday. I'll watch the updates, too, and forward along what I, and meteorologists far more expert than me come up with. 

And if you see "the world is going to end!" storm warnings on social media between now and the weekend, ignore them.  They're just trying to get you excited and click on their sites for fun and especially profit.