I’m still expecting plenty of wintry weather to track in the coming days heading into the weekend and well into next week and even into the end of the month of January!
First, we have a milder air mass moving in for Thu and Fri afternoon from the west. A clipper brings lots of snow to West Virginia in the meantime and maybe a snow squall to the area Thursday evening.
The next system moves in by Saturday morning. Originally this looked like rain but the moisture gets here at the coldest part of the day Saturday morning and the lingering cold air at cloud level may just allow it to snow Saturday morning. Other areas could see rain and snow. Right now I’m wondering if the system gets here in time to keep it wet snow. It’s iffy but I’ve added snow to my forecast as of yesterday and I’m keeping the chance there for Saturday morning.
Here’s the EURO for Saturday morning
Note the 5,000 feet temperatures around 0 Celsius which is freezing, or below in the light colors. That’s where snowflakes will be falling. It’s conceivable that all areas or most areas see snow falling Saturday.
We may still warm up a little Saturday afternoon as the moisture moves east of us. A lull before upper level energy and another low move in with much colder air for Sunday.
Here’s the 5,000 ft temperature forecast Sunday. Look how much colder it is! Temps will start out in the 30s and be in the TEENS by evening.
The EURO and other models show light to moderate snow in the area.
Both Saturday and Sunday are iffy on accumulations but here’s the Euro for those two days… these numbers were not even showing up a few days ago…
Monday and Tuesday now just look super cold as Arctic high pressure sits overhead. However lately I’ve noticed the center Arctic air trends north of us with turn each time it moves in. We get cold but we are not right under the high like the models show.
That could be a factor in keeping snow in our area by the middle of next week instead of the cold high knocking it east into the ocean as some models show.
Also because La Niña is now active in the Pacific, lows will try to track further west. In fact in La Niña with no other factors in place, lows track across Tennessee and Kentucky into Ohio.
If we combine a cold dip in the jet steam with La Niña we could very well see a favorable track for accumulating snow in our area by next Wednesday or so.
I say or so because models haven’t yet found the exact day just yet. But the pattern is there.
The GFS pulled the Wed system out to sea…
…but has big snow Friday of next week, the 24th.
Canadian has Wednesday as the big day which is the solution I’m going with.
The Euro at 12z pushed the Wed wave just SE of us
but gave us a Thursday mix (of next week) by the 23rd.
The 18z is showing snow Tuesady go figure. See, we’re seeing the models picking up on the setup and taking turns running with snow on various days.
The Canadian also shows something late in the month as ice on the 25th. Looking at the pattern, the upper levels warm up by Feb but there’s still a cold low level air mass in place so again I can see the Canadian solution being more accurate late this month.
There’s also the UKMET which is similar to the EURO for WED. You’ll have to do a little work reading this: the blue lines are cold enough for snow. Red lines are rain. The gray to green shading is the amount.
Let’s just run the ensembles out all the way and see what we get. These are dozens of variations done over and over and over again incorrectly – on purpose- to account for errors we can’t detect this far out. Note the even Ensembles are not gospel: the real world can still vary from these.
That said the pattern is good and ALL Ensembles show accumulation through next week and look how far south! Woah!! This is just exciting!
GFS Ensemble
Canadian Ensemble
EURO Ensemble
Heck, even the Model Blend is snowy!
