It’s been a long time since a major snowstorm set its sights on New York City, and residents are assuming once-familiar roles. Nervous weather watchers are overbuying at the grocery store, the mayor is projecting competence while crushing snow-day dreams, and John Homenuk — the enthusiastic but sober-minded meteorologist behind New York Metro Weather, whose “hype free” forecasts are a trusted resource for thousands of New Yorkers — is delivering cautious forecasts. On Friday, I spoke with Homenuk about what New York and the rest of the country can expect from an unusually expansive storm system and its frigid aftermath.

It’s fair to say that this storm is not going to be a miss at this point, right? There’s very little chance that we’ll get some paltry amount of snow?
Correct. The range I put out is six-to-ten inches for New York, followed by some sleet, and that’s very much on the conservative side. Which is definitely intentional, because I feel that the potential mixture mixing with sleet at some point during the storm creates a lot of uncertainty. It’s unclear to me when that sleet changeover is going to occur. So I’m at six to ten right now, but getting higher amounts than that is totally not out of the question.

That does seem to be the big question — at what point the sleet starts. But you think it will happen at some point, regardless?
I do. A little bit about the dynamics of this event: It’s definitely not a classic or one of the historic-looking snowstorms. Typically, our biggest storms come from systems that reform off the coast and form into a strong coastal low. If you remember January 2016 or even what’s called the Boxing Day Blizzard on December 26, 2010, those storms all had a coastal low that really strengthened rapidly off the coast of New Jersey and South Long Island. That’s how New York City tends to do the best with big snowstorms, because you have the dynamics from the strong coastal nor’easter, but when we are to the left of the low, the wind orientation brings in cold air from the north throughout the storm. So you are just funneling cold air in and you have the strong dynamics to keep the snow coming.

But this event is driven by a process called warm-air invection. Basically, it’s the movement of warm air from southwest to northeast. This storm is starting in Texas, and all that moisture and warm air is lifting up toward our area. It’s vectoring toward us, and that’s great for bringing a lot of moisture into the area, but it also brings warm air with it at........

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