Star Date: 8 Feb 2016 Monday

Captain's Log
The Nor'easter tracking well off the New England coast is very impressive on satellite and almost looks like a hurricane! Worth watching on our interactive maps page, mapping page, globe page and or facebook post animation. This Nor'easter brought some moderate to heavier snow from Central Long Island to Coastal New England today but missed the DC t0 NYC corridor all together. While the storm is moving out it's going to interact a bit with a very strong Alberta Clipper spinning in the Midwest. Had these two systems merged, we might have been dealing with another historic blizzard. Hewwwwww

Clippers,originate in West-Central Canada, are usually starved of moisture so while they can be strong, they typically struggle to bring much more than 1-4" type snow amounts. That will be the case for the next couple days in the Appalachians and Northeast. Higher terrain always gets more but the general theme is lighter snow on and off over the next couple days. To see the varying model snowfall totals visit our facebook fan page.

The Clipper will usher in a shot of very cold Arctic Air with some low to middle 30 temps all the way down into Central Florida so certainly some frost and maybe some freezes midweek down there. This will be a big shock after the warmest start to February in 4 years in the Southeast, and warmest in 8 years in the Northeast for the 1-7 Feb week. Then as the clipper pulls away later in the week we get a brief but intense shot of Arctic air for the East Coast and Northeast over the Valentine's/President's day weekend. This typically hurts restaurants, movie theaters and retail store traffic in general as they're already in Spring mode. It will help clear out the mountains of excess winter merchandise they have on hand in light of the previously record warm winter. Yes the November 1st - 7 Feb period is currently the #1 warmest in 121 years for the U.S. overall and especially the Northeast. In our facebook video animation you can see the dark blue (zero line) getting into PA-NJ and even some -10F to -25F in New England (Saranac Lake NY looks to be particularly cold Sat and Sun mornings), fortunately it's short lived. A nation wide warm up appears to take shape the 16th with the later half of the month significantly milder and exponentially warmer than last year's brutal cold that lasted for several weeks into March.

March this year will trend much warmer in the Northeast while much of the West will turn colder and wetter for a delayed Spring out West with even some frost and freezes for Calif in early March!

We hope you're having a great Monday folks! - Capt Kirk out.