Winter Storm Watch for Tuesday night

The National Weather Service in Buffalo and Binghamton has issued a winter storm watch that is in effect for all Finger Lakes region counties from Tuesday evening through Wednesday evening.Up to 6 inches of snow could fall, with visibilities of less than a half-mile or less at times. Travel conditions will deteriorate as roads become snow covered.The National Weather Service said there remains some uncertainty to the exact track of the storm system as it approaches the region. A slightly different track could alter snowfall amounts.FingerLakes1.com Staff Meteorologist Drew Montreuil has more…There are still details that need to be worked out, but here are my latest thoughts on this event.- Low pressure will track up the west side of the Appalachians to southwest Pennsylvania before a secondary low takes over off the coast of New Jersey. This is a fairly common winter storm path that always seems to make the forecast very tough in our area. If the secondary low does not take over quick enough, warm air infiltrates the region and changes our precipitation to sleet or rain.- With that in mind, all major models currently keep the warm air quite a bit to our south, keeping all of our precipitation snow. With such agreement between the models and the above-freezing temperatures far enough away, confidence in an all-snow event is increasing, especially for areas further north and west.- Most models are placing a stripe of heavy snow somewhere across the Finger Lakes and Central New York. Most of these models have total accumulations within this band of a foot or slightly more. Determining where this band will set up, and how heavy it will actually be, will be one of the main things to focus on over the next 24-36 hours.- The peak of this storm would most likely be roughly from 2 or 3am to Noon on Wednesday, with some lighter snow lingering through Thursday.Keep checking back at the FL1 Local Weather Center for more updates. My next update will be early this evening.