[h=2]Snow Returns From Pennsylvania to NYC, Boston
[h=6]By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist [h=5]January 15, 2013; 4:58 AM
This week at least two storm systems will ride northeastward into the mid-Atlantic and New England with a wintry mix in some areas.
The first system brought relatively few problems across the region as mostly rain fell from Washington D.C into Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
There were a few reports of sleet mixing in with the rain, and there were a couple snow flakes on the very northern fringe of ptrecipitaion, but there were no major travel problems.
The second of the two storm systems will arrive in the Northeast later Tuesday/Tuesday night and depart early Wednesday will still be considered a minor event. However, it has the potential to be more significant than the first in that it has the best chance of bringing a wintry accumulation, compromised of mostly snow.
Colder air will continue to filter into the Northeast during the day Tuesday, setting the stage for a somewhat more broad area of frozen precipitation Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
There is a better chance of some snow or a wintry mix reaching into the I-95 swath from near New York City to Boston and perhaps the nearby Philadelphia suburbs with the second event.
Road surface temperatures may still be too warm for much, if any accumulation on the major highways in the I-95 region. However, just enough wintry mix can fall just north and west of these cities for slippery travel.
With the second storm, a general coating to an inch or two accumulation of mostly snow is possible on non-paved surfaces from part of southwestern Pennsylvania and perhaps western Maryland and the high ground of northern West Virginia to the lower Hudson Valley of New York, central and northern Connecticut, central and western Massachusetts and the southern parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
Odds favor rain again in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas with an increasing chance of slippery spots as you head into the distant northwestern suburbs.
Meteorologists call storms of this nature "flat waves of low pressure." In the right circumstances they can bring moderate to heavy precipitation. In the case this week, odds favor little or no precipitation with the first wave and light precipitation and the potential for moderate precipitation for some areas with the second wave.
Dry air will hold on over northern Ohio to northern upstate New York and northern New England.
Arctic air will overspread the Great Lakes, New England, neighboring Canada and upstate New York later in the week.
There is a chance a third wave of low pressure rides northeastward later this week from the South.
Additional pushes of arctic air will tend to punch a bit farther to the south next week as the implications of the stratospheric warming event that occurred earlier in the month near the North Pole are realized.