A coastal storm has two likely paths -- up over the region and out into the Atlantic, a WeatherWorks meteorologist says.
This much seems clear -- Thanksgiving and Black Friday likely will be partly sunny and chilly, a WeatherWorks meteorologist said this morning.
But looking several days out at the potential for a coastal storm on the traveling days Tuesday and Wednesday, there are two serious scenarios, neither of which is set in stone, meteorologist Nick Troiano said this morning from Hackettstown.
Neither looks likely to bring a repeat of the Thanksgiving snow of 2010, he said.
Forecasters are looking at energy in Canada and in the American Southwest for clues to how a storm expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico will travel, Troiano said. The energy will all be over land by Sunday, making it easier to predict the path, he said.
WeatherWorks is providing two possible paths for the storm -- either it could move up the coast bringing as much as an inch of rain to the region, but only snow in the mountainous interiors, or it could move off the coast and leave it brisk but dry in the Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey, Troiano said.
In a simulation on the weather company's website, it suggests a 60 percent chance the storm misses the region.
Either way, it's unlikely to combine enough cold to bring snow to the region. Weather.com is showing a high of 41 on Tuesday and 38 on Wednesday.
"If the storm gets up here, there's a lot of moisture in it," Troiano said. "... There's definitely a threat, but it's still seven days out; all the caveats of long-range forecasting still apply."
At this point, it's easier to forecast the temperature -- coastal winds around the storm should warm up the area early in week, followed by colder weather from Thanksgiving on, Troiano said.
But, as for the storm, we'll have to wait a few days, WeatherWorks says, because southern moisture has to hook up with northern cold for a worst-case picture to be painted.
"And unfortunately, typical of most coastal storms, this interaction cannot be accurately predicted more than a few days out," the company says in its holiday prediction.