Sunday Evening Blizzard Update: The Wild Weather Has Started

A prediction of what the radar imagery of this
nor'easter will look like later tonight. Sort of looks
like a hurricane but it's built completely 
different from one. 

Getting a late start on my brief evening blizzard update as I had to be elsewhere.

Our major blizzard in the Northeast is underway. 

Some of the stats a facts are absolutely impressive. Meteorologist Ben Noll  says that 42 million people expect major or extreme impacts from the storm; 30 million people are under a blizzard warning and 21 percent of the nation's population will be affected by the storm one way or another.    

As meteorologist Matthew Cappucci notes, this storm is a meteorological marvel. A calm, clear eye will develop in the storm. It's not the same mechanism that you see in hurricane but it makes the storm somewhat visually resemble a tropical system

Way out to sea, in the storm's warm sector, powerful supercell thunderstorms will develop, with waterspouts. Not the skinny little almost harmless things you sometimes see off the coast of Florida. Instead, these waterspouts would be Midwestern style powerful tornadoes. 

In much of the blizzard zone today. light wet snow and raind rops. As of 6 p.m. the snow intensity was starting to pick up. An offshore really heavy band of snow looked like it would make landfall in New Jersey and New York metro area by around 7 p.m. 

The blizzard should maintain its intensity in New Jersey and southern New York until late morning or early afternoon tomorrow, 

In New England, Rhode Island has imposed a travel ban in the state starting at 7 p.m. this evening. New Jersey and New York City also have travel bans. I kind of wish Massachusetts would follow suit. I have at least one unconfirmed report that a couple major employers expect to see employees in the office tomorrow. 

If that's true, those businesses are incredibly irresponsible. Especially considering will dump 18  to 25 inches of badly windblown snow, propelled by winds of up to 75 mph near the coast. 

The National Weather Service office in the Boston area said:

"We can't stress this enough but this storm will likely bring extreme to destructive impacts south and east of the I-95 corridor, especially southeast MA and Cape Cod due to the combination of heavy, wet snow and damaging wind gusts. Heavy, wet snowfall amounts up to 2 ft with damaging winds presents a serious concern for tree damage and power outages."

 This thing means business! 

VERMONT EFFECTS 

Overall, the forecast for the big nor'easter hasn't  changed much. 

The southernmost two counties of Vermont are still under a winter storm warning for a windblown 6 t0 12 inches of snow.  That's a little more than what they were predicting this morning. Rutland and Windsor counties are still in for two to six inches. Northern Vermont from the Green Mountains east should get an inch or two, plus blowing snow due to stiff north winds. 

The northern and central Champlain Valley on Monday should only get an inch or less with those gusty winds an blowing snow.

There's still chances that snow bands could behave differently than currently forecast, so look for updates tomorrow morning

I'll have a detailed post on this nor'easter tomorrow morning, of course!