My take on the system rolling east through the plains remains about the same...a storm into the Ohio Valley, reforming on the east coast and then moving northeast. Monster snows of 1-2 feet nail the I-80 corridor in Nebraska, but diminish to a few inches this weekend in the lower lakes. Since I think this will hold together and then supply the base for the arctic trough to dig into next week, I think snows will increase north of the Mason Dixon line into Southern New England. I must remind you, yesterday your despair was from this running to the lakes, I told you it won't do that. I would not despair the other way now, but there is a lesson here, for those wishing to use the NCEP NAO...Use Ryan Maue's instead, for you can see with your own 2 eyes which is working better when dissecting this.  Obviously if the NAO was positive, with all the warm air around, you would not have a storm moving off the mid-atlantic coast Thursday and deepening, and then the threat of this collapsing too far south. Again, you can just use one thing and say that is the reason for this or that.

I am playing a game here a bit, in that now that it appear  that this IS NOT CHRISTMAS,  we should simply use what usually happens when the mean trough retrogrades like this.  The model  is off base, handing off the system in back of the mean trough to the trough offshore.. it moves out and the system coming from the west then starts the process of  forming the trough further back.  In other words, on Saturday, the trough in the means is near 60 west, but reforms back via the storm coming from the west as well as the jet diving in from the north near  75 west by Wednesday of next week. If there is snowcover from the Mason Dixon line north, and I think there will be, it will get darn cold in the northeast, though the plains is still "kiss your sister" cold as the coldest of the cold heads into the northeast. However with the jet cutting underneath and a central plains high, Texas does cool, but not super cold,  yet.. 

The next step, by next weekend (valentines  day weekend) will be to pull the trough back into the lakes.  

But I can't stick maps up here left and right except to say that yesterday you had a storm to the lakes for next week, today you have it suppressed to the south...My advice is that we will have to hit the one in the middle, which is a monster for Nebraska.  (So much so, I am thinking PSU wrestling should charter a plane to Lincoln so they have control of the time they leave... I fear many so cancellations in Nebraska and Iowa Saturday that if they are supposed to leave Omaha at 1:45, they could have that cancelled, meaning a sold out match with Michigan Sunday here doesnt go.)  That storm weakens in amounts east but then may re-fire along the east coast early next week.  It makes sense, as that is what storms like this usually do.

thanks for reading, ciao for now