Let's talk timeline. This will be a long event, with heavy lake effect snow developing tonight and lasting all the way through the weekend. With the lake effect bands slowly changing orientations, no one location will see the heavy snow for the entire duration of the event.🧵
This afternoon and evening, expect relatively disorganized lake effect precip east and southeast of the lakes with a mix of rain and snow. Tonight, a changeover to all snow as the lake effect bands organize and intensify. The band off Lake Erie will de-intensify a bit tomorrow.
Thursday night, the LE bands off both lakes will shift northward, impacting the Buffalo and Watertown Metro areas. The band off Erie will re-intensify as it does so. The band off Lake Ontario intensifies Friday. Significant snowfall continues in these areas through Friday night.
The lake effect bands will shift further north on Saturday, now mainly impacting Northern Erie and Niagara Counties, as well as northern Jefferson County. A southward shift of both bands will occur on Sunday, back across the Buffalo and Watertown Metro areas.
Where the lake effect is the most intense and persistent, snow will be measured in feet, not inches. Travel within these bands will be extremely dangerous, if not impossible. This will especially be the case across the Buffalo Metro Friday and Friday night.
@NWSBUFFALO @MarkMaske @NFL better get browns in towns early.
@NWSBUFFALO Dang my Nursing clinical is in East Aurora tomorrow. I would rather not make a normally 45 minute drive down from Niagara Falls in those conditions.
@NWSBUFFALO Y'all are kings for this. Definitely helping me plan my travel for NF from Baltimore Friday night. North to Lake Ontario and across it is 🤌
@NWSBUFFALO Your tweet was quoted in an article by boston boston.com/news/weather/2…