Yesterday I presented two possible scenarios with Tuesday's storm. The data last night was fairly consistent with the track, so the overall picture is becoming more clear.
The maps below show the forecast of the upper atmosphere next Monday and Tuesday (500 mb heights and vorticity). What you will notice is that the smaller storm in the deep south races ahead of the low in the Pacific Northwest. This is important because there really isn't a phase, or merge, of the two storms. Instead, the storm in the northwest becomes the main feature by early Tuesday.
Also notice that the jet stream flow is more flat - east/west as opposed to north/south orientation. This could take away from our accumulation potential. The Christmas storm was deeper and slower, which allowed it to dump a lot of snow.
Although this storm doesn't look as big as the Christmas storm, it still has the potential to bring an accumulating snow to our area. We will have more updates in the coming days!
