Joe Bastardi: Historic Cold May Follow Monster Northeast Storm

Monday’s Nor’easter will be monstrous, but the bone-chilling cold to follow may be historic, weather expert Joe Bastardi said on Newsmax TV’s "America’s Forum."

"The snow, as extreme as it is now, may be rivaled next week by the cold," Bastardi, chief forecaster for WeatherBELL, told hosts J.D. Hayworth and Francesca Page Monday.

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"In other words, when you look at deviation from normal this is a very, very big event and there are others coming behind it. Maybe not as strong as this, but snow in many of the areas getting it now, Thursday then again Sunday, and just spectacular cold early next week," he explained.

"It wouldn't surprise me if New York goes below zero a few nights, which is a very rare event over there," he added.

Bastardi also said that some Northeasterners should be prepared for more of the same — snow and biting cold — well into next month.

"Some of you folks in the Northeast, you may not see it rain again before February 15 because every precipitation event will be in the form of snow," Bastardi told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Monday.

The upside, he said, is that this week's blizzard in the east will behave like a Midwesterner — meaning cold and dry with plenty of snow, but less of the wet, heavy, blanketing kind that threatens trees and power lines.

"This is going to be a very dry storm, more like something you might see in the Midwest, where temperatures are in the teens and twenties while it's snowing, rather than 32 or 33 degrees," said Bastardi. "It's a blessing in some respects … This is a type of situation where a lot of [snow] just blows through the trees, and so that's a positive there."

It's wishful thinking to hope that forecasters might be wrong about what's coming this week, he added.

"This is a big storm," said Bastardi.

For New Yorkers, he said, the Nor'easter could rival if not surpass the record-setters of February 2006 and December 2010.

"We have recent memory of this in New York, " said Bastardi.

But he predicted that Long Island and New England really could see new records for snowfall. "For you folks in New England, think February 1978 — very, very similar to that overall," he said.

Asked whether this storm is connected to climate change, Bastardi said, "Absolutely not," describing the winter weather pattern in force today as a repeat of climate cycles from 1958 and 1978.

"Where was the global warming then?" he said.

The "crippling" weather, as officials have described the anticipated storm, is predicted to bury northern New Jersey to southern Maine with up to two feet of snow, according to Yahoo News, which cited a National Weather Service blizzard warning for a 250-mile stretch.

"This is going to be one of the greatest storms in the history of southern New England, Long Island and even back to New York City," Bastardi said earlier on America's Forum. "I don't know if it's going to beat what happened in 1978 or what happened in New York City in December of 2010.

"The reason I'm bringing that up is there's statements being made that this is the worst ever, this is the worst you'll ever see," he said.

"The benchmark for snow in New York is 26.9 inches in Central Park and I don't know if it's going to get to that, it's probably going to get to 20 or 22," according to Bastardi.

The storm kicks off a two-week spate of "extraordinarily bad weather" that will continue through Feb. 10.

While he says that the blizzard may not be the "worst storm ever," the chief forecaster for WeatherBELL says it is "certainly life threatening and dangerous."

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According to Bastardi, there's a conflict going on "behind the scenes" between "the two biggest computer modeling centers in the world — the European Center versus the U.S. Center," which he says "are at war with each other."

The European model predicts that the blizzard will hammer New York City, he explained. While the U.S. model has one model predicting that New York City will be hit with six to eight inches and one with 20 to 25 inches.