Clippers

Chris, I wanted to answer your question but I need a lot of space. So I'm making a new post:

Question:

"Okay So I've been sitting here researching all the weather websites. They are saying 2 to 4 from the clipper. its way uyp by the great lakes? What can we expect from that? And Also since most they can never forecast weather i think the coastal storm will hit us?"

Answer:

Yeah I did notice that a lot of sites were saying two-four inches of snow. We have the three major ones being weather.com, accuweather, and Noaa. Most of all those other sites just take their forecasts straight from Noaa (like wunderground). But Ill only go with the one-two inches, two inches being generous I think. Clippers just don't give us a lot of snow, and I have a little story for you.

When I was coming home from Louisville Kentucky I had to cross over the Allegheny Mountains of West Virgina and Maryland. As I was going up the west slopes there was precip falling the entire time, until I hit Big Savage Mountain. From that point on I was now on the east slopes of the Mountains and going down hill. Within a minute it went from being moderate precip falling to blue skies and temperature rose. This is called a rain shadow and it's why clippers and lake effect snow can rarely reach us with ample precip.

As air rises it expands and begins to cool (7 degrees per thousand feet) which allows for condensation. This is why the Mountains of West Virgina, North Carolina, and even North Georgia can get lake effect snows! It just sucks the moisture right out of the atmosphere. Now when the air finally makes it over the mountains it starts to sink and instead of cooling, it now warms up and becomes dry. Unfortunately with the mountains to our west, this happens to us all the time. You can blame the Poconos, and even High Point!

Since the storm is now dried out, it turns to the ocean to intensify. The only problem is that we are a little too far away from the ocean so the only people who benefit are eastern Long Island, coastal Jersey, and Cape Cod. If you want some nice snow, Cape Cod is the place to be this weekend!

This clipper should squeeze out some light accumulations (1-2)and the coastal storm will likely miss us entirely. But like you said, these models can never forecast weather right so always keep the unlikely in the realm of possibility.

Hope this helped some!