Richmond might not have much of a white Christmas weekend after all.
The coming snowstorm is starting to take an eastward track, which would bring the Richmond area much less snow than initially seemed possible, said Andrew Zimmerman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield. A private forecaster, meantime, isn't ready to say yet that the snowfall will be light.
"At this point for the Richmond area it would look just minor at this point," Zimmerman said. "Farther to the east there could be potential for several inches, probably not any kind of a record."
Zimmerman said there still is a chance of snow in Richmond later Christmas Saturday night and into Sunday evening "given that we still are a little bit away." But he said forecasting models are starting to come into better agreement and the chances of a strong snow storm in Richmond now appear to be "an extreme outlier."
It now appears Richmond might get "a couple of inches at at most" and it might just be flurries, Zimmerman said. Given the storm's eastward track, Tidewater through the Eastern Store could get an accumulation of snow "but it could just be over the ocean," Zimmerman added.
Christmas in Richmond is likely to be cloudy, but as for precipitation, "there won't be much of anything," Zimmerman said.
As for tamping down expectations for snow in Richmond, "I'm not willing to do that yet," said David Tolleris, a commercial weather forecaster in Chesterfield County.
He said that while some forecasting models are "swinging the storm around further and off the coast," it's still early in the cycle and the next 24 hours will be more definitive.
He noted that one forecasting model that came out at 6 a.m. today still projected 6 to 12 inches of snow in central Virginia, but a later model did not include significant accumulation. Tolleris said he waiting to see an additional forecasting model this afternoon to get a better idea of the storm's track.
"I'm taking more of a wait and see approach," he said.
(This has been a breaking weather news update. Check back for more details as they become available.)
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