I’ve deliberately not written anything regarding Wednesday’s potential storm for fear of jinxing it, but with confidence growing and Winter Storm Watches issued across all of central and western MD, it’s time to take this event seriously.

Unfortunately, as was the case with last week’s system, we will be on the wrong side of storm so it will not be an all snow event, but with a well-placed high pressure center to our north east, dense, cold air will be funneled down the eastern seaboard at the lower levels and forced to dam up against the mountains to the west. This is going to be one of our classic cold air damming (CAD) events with heavy snow transitioning to sleet, freezing rain, and eventually rain. Once the heavier cold air gets established at the surface, it takes a long time to get scoured out, so we are once again looking at a prolonged icing event for the normally favored areas to the west and north of I 95 with some areas staying below freezing for most of the event.

One big difference with this system compared to last week is that there is likely going to be a period of heavy snowfall Wednesday morning into the early afternoon before enough warm air infiltrates the upper levels to begin the transition to sleet. As a result, snow accumulations of greater than 3″ of snow are likely across the entire area, with many areas receiving upwards of 6″ or more. Determining the details of who gets how much and the timing on the transitions from snow to sleet to the dreaded freezing rain are yet to be determined, but suffice it to say that travel on Wednesday and Wednesday night will likely be discouraged across all of central MD.

I’ll begin regular updates on this storm with the next coming this evening.