So a snowstorm is in the forecast, but not from any of the US models

Today was an interesting day to follow NOAA's HPC products & forecasts (prepared by people) and compare them against NCEP's NAM/GFS models. If you only looked at the models, you'd think "man, looks like another near-miss for us in terms of snow"; if you only looked at HPC's products, you'd think "wow someone is in for a heavy snow event". -- see the two images below: first from GFS, second from HPC.

Reconciling the two (they're just down the street in Silver Spring, MD!) requires going abroad: to the Canadian met office model (CMC), the United Kingdom Met Office model (UKMET), and the European Centre model (ECMWF)- all 3 of which are forecasting heavy precipitation all along the US East Coast, from Virginia northward to Maine. The problem for Annapolis area is the thermal profile- the consensus in the models (the ones that actually forecast heavy precip for us) is that we'll be above freezing somewhere in the troposphere during much of the precipitation. Hopefully the model predictions are underestimating the contribution from 'dynamic cooling' (as strong upward vertical motion cools the air column as parcels rise)- and maybe we get more snow than less.

Regardless as we head toward Tue/Wed, this remains an interesting event to follow: watching which model camp turns out to have best-predicted the event (American or Int'l), and then if the Int'l suite is right, how much precipitation do we get (1.5" liquid-equivalent, according to HPC?) and in what form will it fall?