The upcoming pattern featuring a deterioration of the +EPO that gave us the recent warmth, changes in the tropics and at least a brief respite from a very La Nina-like conditions, yields analogue support for significant east coast cyclogenesis next week. The Euro has been advertising a major winter storm for New England for around Thursday 2/19. The GFS has been a little inconsistent but still has been indicating significant storm development for the northeast in the same timeframe. This is coinciding with a rapidly falling AO, a negative NAO, and neutral jog in the PNA. Our biggest issue will be not the best Pacific pattern, but given an intense 50/50 low that is progged to develop from a wave shooting off the coast on Monday, we should secure a snow event for at least a portion of the northeast.

Good support for a Miller B type storm development at the time. A piece of energy will eject east from the western trough and amplify into a strong primary low over the Ohio Valley before transferring to the coast. The 00z ECMWF verbatim shows a major to historical scenario with widespread 1 to 3 feet of snow across SNE and CNE and blizzard conditions. The HPC has even cited this potential and has been hammering home some notable analogue dates.

A lot of people will likely think of the last "historical" storm potential that was progged for February 3rd that had such good model in this time range before falling apart. That was a different scenario however. The Feb 3 storm potential had numerous pieces of energy involved that complicated the forecast situation. In addition, the forecasted storm was a Miller A type that oftentimes has to have more requirements filled to come to fruition. This weekend will be crucial to determine how real and of what magnitude the upcoming threat really is.