For most of central New York it will continue to be windy this evening with mainly flurries. The main band lake effect snow will be north of Syracuse on a westerly wind. However, later this evening a disturbance in the jet stream winds aloft will move through central New York. This will cause a shift in our winds into the northwest, pushing lake effect steadily south through Oswego and northern Oneida Counties. After midnight (and closer to daybreak) the lake effect moves down close to the city of Syracuse. That means close to the morning commute there will be heavy snow.
As winds turn a bit more into the northwest Friday morning, lake effect snow will continue to shift back into the Finger Lakes and weaken. The rest of Friday will be highlight by colder weather. The air mass moving in for the end of the week is not nearly as cold as what we went through last week but still our temperatures will be about 10 degrees below normal for this time of year.
We mentioned that lake effect will weaken during the middle of the day Friday but it won’t come to an end. In fact, there is a chance that it will try to re-organize Friday evening as winds begin to shift again. Ultimately the winds Friday night will turn back into the west but before they do they will become favorable for putting a few squalls in the Syracuse area. Again, we expect this to be during the first part of the night and overnight any squalls would shift north of Syracuse. Winds turn more into the southwest which would put any squalls off Lake Ontario even farther north of Syracuse. The only thing we have to keep a close eye on is some activity that would come off Lake Erie into the Finger Lakes.
