Over the past few days, many have been asking about a 30 inch blizzard next week. My advice to you, is please don't believe it. Many of these blizzard rumors have roots in amateur weather facebook/twitter pages that just post whichever model produces the most snow. Most of these pages are created by those who do not have a degree in meteorology and just like the weather. Every operational forecaster on our staff (including the social media department) have either bachelor's or master's degrees in meteorology and that's why you will NOT find this storm currently mentioned in our media. With years of schooling and experience, we know it is far too irresponsible to post "Epic Blizzard Coming February 8/9th" 10 days in advance of a storm. These blockbuster storms are notorious for being shown on guidance one day, then are gone the next. Here are two runs of the GFS model from today, which are only 12 hours apart. One run forecasts a hit next Sunday (left) and the other shows largely a miss (Right). These discrepencies happen a lot.
With that said, next week is an active time and does have legitimate storm threats. The first, possibly overlooked storm, could be Monday, bringing snow potential to the Mid-Atlantic. The next storm comes Tuesday Night into Wednesday, where the low may take a western track, giving the Northeast a thump of several inches of snow followed by freezing rain and rain. The final storm threat comes next weekend, which has potential to be a large snowstorm based on moisture surging from the Gulf and a large dome of high pressure over the Northeast. As for specific snow amounts, there is way too much uncertainty to predict them in good conscience. This storm could just as easily be shunted out to sea by the same high pressure area providing the cold needed for big snow. We'll keep you posted on the latest as details become clearer.
