December 20 MAJOR Snow Event (Updated 12/13)

Confidence: Medium-High
Snowday Chance: Low-Medium

This is a special briefing on a potentially MAJOR winter storm for the December 20th timeframe. This briefing comes as the 'King' of weather models (ECMWF) is printing out a snowstorm for cities such as Chicago, Detroit in the Midwest. What is even more astounding is how the ECMWF and ECMWF Ensembles match up at this point in time. Below is an image comparing the ECMWF ENS and ECMWF model itself at hour 168.

The similarities (minus the strength) at this point in time, especially with low placement, are very encouraging to my eyes that this may turn out. While we still have the GFS and other models to look at, keep in mind that the ECMWF ensembles have 51 different members coming together to produce a solution. If these 51 members still find a very similar solution, there is definitely some interest in that.
Another aspect to look at is the ECMWF's snowfall forecast. Here's the snowfall forecast at hour 168, the same hour as the images above.

The ECMWF is printing a band of very heavy snow to interact with the Midwest. It even appears to be targeting cities such as Chicago and Detroit right in the heaviest snowfall area. Our confidence level in this event is currently at a medium-high level right now, as shown at the top of the page. The reason we have the snow day chance level low is obviously due to the fact that this event is over 5 days away. Here's our model solution.

Model: ECMWF/ECMWF Ensembles
Reason: Ensembles and model are in very good agreement