Some more rain/snow showers this afternoon

Our weather the next couple of days will be dominated by a complex, slow-moving storm system.  Early Thursday morning the weather map still shows the storm spread out with two areas of low pressure: one near Kingston, Canada and one near New York city.  One or both of these lows will have an impact on our weather into the weekend.

Low pressure that is near Kingston now will slowly move east.  This will continue to bring us plenty of clouds this afternoon.  Temperatures are still borderline in lower elevation so there will continue to be a mix of rain and wet snow.  Higher elevations will be mainly snow with little if any accumulation. The low moving close to us this afternoon will be weakening so the ‘forcing’ to create precipitation is not all that great.  Snow showers will be less widespread as a result.

By Friday, the two lows we mentioned above will merge off the New England coast.  This will cause a few things that will change our weather.  First, the counterclockwise flow around the new main low off the coast will turn our winds into the northwest.  This will tap into colder air now north over Canada and force it down over is.  This is just cold enough to cause lake effect snow showers Friday.

The cold air that arrives will be reinforced over the weekend.  Temperatures in central New York will average a bit more than 10 degrees below normal for the beginning of March. Combine that with a continued north to northwesterly flow and we have to kept snow showers in the forecast for the entire weekend.