BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Lehigh Valley residents brushing off the snow from Monday’s storm are already looking ahead to the end of the week.
Forecasters say another system will target the Mid-Atlantic region on Friday, and it will likely bring another shot of frozen precipitation to the area.
- Another winter storm is likely at the end of the week, forecasters say
- It's projected to bring snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain
- The front end of the storm could produce a thump of snow before the changeover
The latest overnight suite of guidance puts a thump of snow on the front end of the storm, but shows it probably won’t be a major snowmaker.
Instead, the Lehigh Valley area is likely to see another overrunning storm that changes to mixed precipitation and rain.
“It does start as snow across many of our locations, and then it does go to sleet, freezing rain and then rain,” said EPAWA meteorologist Bobby Martrich in his latest video update.
Martrich described the storm system — which is expected to develop across the Mississippi Valley and track through the Ohio Valley towards the Great Lakes and eventually northern New England — as once again seeing warm air advection take over.
It means we’ll see warm air overriding colder air at the surface as the storm moves through.
“That’s pretty much the same on all the models,” he said, describing them as being in good agreement on the upcoming storm.
But forecasters at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly are concerned about the icing potential for the southern Poconos and northwest New Jersey.
“Guidance hints at a pretty decent cold air damming setup Friday into Saturday,” the discussion noted, resulting in what could be a prolonged period of freezing rain in these areas.
The latest guidance showed a 40% chance for Mount Pocono to exceed a tenth of an inch of ice accumulation.
“We’ll see how this trends as we get closer,” the discussion said.
The latest on Friday’s storm
Projected arrival: Late Thursday night
Transition period from snow to mixed precipitation: Sometime Friday afternoon or evening
Full change to rain: Friday night, wrapping up early Saturday morning
What could change? Martrich says the Canadian model is the coldest solution, showing the changeover to rain not making it into the Lehigh Valley
“This is a finely tuned detail that we’ll look at the rest of the week and see how this plays out,” he said. “But I think the general idea is that you’re going to get a front end thump of snow … we’ll see.”
