Absolutely mind boggling would probably be the proper term to describe what is currently going on with this storm. 119,000 power outages have been reported so far, and are rising at an extremely fast pace. At 6:30 PM, there was unverified information about a man that was struck by lightning around the Baltimore Washington area along with multiple flashes of lightning, thunder, and snow rates of 2-4, even some locally 5 inch amounts per hour!!!! Although the storm isn't holding onto its 4 and 5 inch per hour snow rates, there will certainly be bands of 2-3 inches per hour, and as the night wears on it is possible that we regain some of those 4 and 5 inch snow rates due to the storm strengthening over sea. Winds are beginning to gust in the tristate area, meeting my forecast of blizzard conditions, and potentially a complete blizzard. Its going to interesting as I am watching intense thunderstorms to the south that will move north, meet the cold air, and turn into mini blizzards. This storm may hold the most thunder snow of any storm in history and I wouldn't be surprised if more were to come later tonight. My snowfall forecast is looking right on and I am completely going with it through the night and into tomorrow. The ending time will be interesting. From what I can see it looks like the storm is slowing down a bit, and I would assume the snow would stop around 7 or 8 AM from south to north. But I've been hearing more unverified information about the storm actually beginning to stall, and even more unverified information about the storm speeding up. This will likely affect the total snow accumulations, and school cancellations for tomorrow. The snow could stop at any time between 4 AM and 9 AM. Right now I would say around 7 or 8 AM, because the heaviest snow will fall from now until around 3 AM. That's it for now, keep checking here for the latest.
-Scott Pecoriello
