Today’s El Nino East Coast Storm

Fig. 1: Satellite view of this morning’s El Nino East Coast storm featuring a tail of convection and influence into the deep tropics of the East Pacific.

Discussion: In the East, a departing El Nino storm (Fig. 1) continues to raise havoc over the Northeast Corridor featuring ongoing flooding rains in southern and eastern New England where high wind is also occurring leading to patchy power outages. Inland areas are going over to snow and a Winter Storm Warning for heavy snow remains in effect for Eastern New York, Vermont, Northern New Hampshire, and Northwest Maine. Snow warnings are in effect as far south as West Virginia to North Carolina Appalachians. Typical of El Nino storms, the following air mass is not that cold. However, there is a Freeze Warning out this morning for South-central Texas as <32F almost reaches the Texas Coast just north of Corpus Christi.

Although the week ahead across much of the U.S. is generally quiet, one exception is the Gulf region particularly Texas and Florida where heavy rain is expected beginning Wednesday and lasting through the weekend (Fig. 2). A period of snow across northwestern Texas is likely on Saturday. Again, a classic El Nino weather pattern.

The U.S. gas population weight HDD forecast remains very warm, and the trend is slightly warmer than 24 hours ago (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2: The GFS 120-hour rainfall forecast beginning dawn on Wednesday across the eastern half of the U.S.

Fig. 3: U.S. population weight HDD forecast based on all models, their consensus, and comparing with 24 hours ago and the 30-year/10-year normal.