Below are my technical thoughts from last night. Little has changed in my thinking with respect to next week's potential winter storm:

Twenty-Four day 500mb upper air analysis from 00Z February 2 reveals a weather pattern dominated by a large positive PNA ridge that, at some points, stretched almost all the way to the North Pole. A massive polar vortex has remained relatively persistent over southern Canada, driving very low atmospheric heights into the CONUS. Currently, 500mb height anomalies are around -350 to -360 meters over the Canadian Maritimes.

The aforementioned positive PNA ridge has slowly been trending towards a more neutral state as successive upper lows rotate towards the Pacific Northwest. Nonetheless, it appears as if near normal to slightly below normal temperatures will remain the norm over the northeastern portion of the country for at least the next week or so as the PV spins over eastern Canada.

12Z Ensemble GFS/MREF members reveal very similar solutions through at leas the next 144 hours. A piece of upper air energy looks likely to eject northward from the Laptev Sea within the next 36 to 48 hours and attempt to partially phase with the current Polar lobe over Newfoundland. This new polar low will likely play a significant part in a potential major winter storm for the Southeast and Mid Atlantic states early next week.

As mentioned above, most GFS/ MRF ensemble members seem to agree (uncharacteristically at such an extended range) on some sort of modified Miller A low pressure system developing in the south central United States next Sunday evening/Monday morning, with a large area of isentropic lift and associated precipitation developing along and to the east of the low pressure center. The aforementioned polar low that should traverse the North Pole in the next few days will likely aid in suppressing the potential storm system far enough south to keep the precipitation-type for the immediate metro region primarily snow.

Synoptically, the surface set-up looks to closely resemble that of the President’s Day snowstorm of 2003, which dumped upwards of three feet of snow across the region. While this storm does not look to be accompanied by as strong a 500mb low, the surface set-up is very similar, which, along with the almost unanimous model support from the ECMWF/GFS/MRF/CANADIAN models, leads me to believe there is a very good potential for a significant winter weather event in the Mid Atlantic next week.

Granted, the cosmetics of this storm are very uncertain at this point, as they would be with any potential storm over 5 days out, but signs are pointing in the snow-lovers’ favor. I am a little concerned with the set-up of the PNA ridge and NAO, which has basically been positive the entire winter, as well as the position of the polar low in southern Canada (which may build so far south it shunts precipitation south of the region), but these concerns will be smoothed out as time progresses. Needless to say, this system bears very careful attention over the weekend.