My Clipper Senses are Tingling...

The GFS has a nice clipper in here for Tuesday. The NAM has it going south of us. This has me concerned for 2 reasons...

1. Clippers are some of the worst weather events to forecast in the world. They change course quickly and intensify with even the slightest bit of moisture flow interception. If there's a model putting this thing north of us when we've been seeing actual storm tracks south of the model estimates, we may indeed get this one.
2. The temperature is going to be VERY cold Tuesday night, I'm talking single digits. You know that I've said that the colder it is the fluffier and bigger the snow flakes get. Even though the most this clipper can dump out is .2 inches of liquid precipitation, the snow conversion amounts will be way higher than 10:1 (25:1 maybe?).

You know the drill, I can't estimate accumulations until the GFS and NAM stop their domestic dispute. Once that occurs I can really hit the accumulations head on. I've heard estimates as to how much snow this thing can potentially produce, but no placement on that yet. At the moment, the GFS says it will be here. The NAM says it will go north to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Columbus. Who shall we believe? I don't know yet, the NAM messed up our first snow storm and the GFS beefed it on the Thursday storm at this far out in the forecast. This is a very risky system; a good forecaster would leave the snow chance in his prediction and wait for a sure consensus on the models before saying, "Milk and Bread!!!!!" (Which could be possible if we play our cards right on Tuesday...).

I will laugh if our biggest storm of the year comes from a clipper system (not saying it will).