Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Day 6 of Watertown, NY (KART)

The southerly winds did not arrive until 07z last night, ensuring a low of 24F, near the bottom end of the distribution. Since then, abundant sunshine until early afternoon caused a rapid warmup to 69F, the warmest February temperature ever recorded there! Surprisingly, despite the sunshine and warmth, winds only got up to 17 kt. It seems like southerly winds somehow do not get very strong at KART. Wind and clouds will keep temperatures quite warm tonight, with a slower warmup tomorrow due to more clouds, but there will still be enough sunshine for temperatures to be similar to or slightly cooler than today. A sharp cold front will bring a quick-hitting line of heavy showers (possibly thunderstorms) with rapidly falling temperatures, and rain changing to snow for a couple of hours in the evening. Given the colder temperatures and wind, whatever snow that falls will likely undercatch. The line of showers or thunderstorms will bring a brief period of strong winds best captured by higher resolution models. With the strong winds mixing the lowest layer of cold air well, models should be pretty good at capturing the low temperature at the end (Thursday 06z). Lake Ontario will provide a bit of moderation to the cold air mass given the westerly winds, but the well-mixed blast of cold air moving in quickly means that the effect shouldn't be more than a couple of degrees F.
 
Source: PivotalWeather
 
Source: PivotalWeather
 

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