Wind in the lower atmosphere will go through quite a bit of change in direction Friday night. Initially, winds will be out of the northwest. That means during this evening some heavier squalls will be in the Syracuse area. It looks like we are going to get some contribution from Georgian Bay which will enhance the snowfall. We wouldn’t be surprised if the snowfall rates jump back up to around an inch an hour. Total accumulations around Syracuse this evening, however, will only end up around 1-3”
We might normally go with higher totals given this upstream connection and the cold air aloft. However, the change in wind direction we mentioned above will take place later this evening. The steering winds in the lower atmosphere will go from northwest to west and that will push the lake snows into Oswego, northern Oneida and Lewis counties. The band of lake snow will steadily move north throughout the night and should be nearing Jefferson county and the northern Tug Hill by late tonight.
Any lake effect snow off Lake Ontario will be well north of Syracuse Saturday as the winds ultimately turn into the southwest. One thing to keep an eye on is some lake effect sneaking off Lake Erie into the northern part of the Finger Lakes or Wayne. It wouldn’t be a big snowfall but there could be a couple inches of new snow. Outside the lake effect Saturday, a jet stream disturbance approaching from the north will causes a general area of flurries or light snow across the rest of central New York during the afternoon.
A couple systems will come together at the end of the weekend to spin up a bigger storm system off the New England coast Sunday evening. While this bigger storm will be too far east to directly impact us, one of the weaker systems forming that storm will move through central New York during the afternoon. This will cause snow to break out during the last half of the day. There could even be a brief period of squally weather.
As the aforementioned storm forms off New England, northwesterly winds will start to strengthen over Sunday night into Monday. That means a renewed threat for lake effect snow in central New York.
