Early Saturday....

Just wanted to put up a quick post about our incoming storm system. Interesting to see both the Flood and Winter Storm Watches hoisted for the system.



After skimming through the overnight model data, not a ton of changes I see except for it appearing the southward trend we saw yesterday appears to have stopped. One other item is that the system continues to slow even a bit more, and it might be late tonight before the rain moves in for many places.

As colder air moves in tomorrow, the rain will kick over to some wintry precip from north/northwest to south. The best snow opportunity for northern NC will be from later tomorrow afternoon through tomorrow night.

I like the chances of northern NC (roughly along and north of I-40) getting some snow on the ground. I especially like the chances now that it appears more and more of the precip will extend until after sunset tomorrow.

Temperatures will fall into/ through the 30s tomorrow into tomorrow evening with snow becoming possible from north to south as colder air aloft moves in. There will probably be a period of time where we lose the moisture in the snow growth region aloft, but indications seem to be that lift will again increase around tomorrow evening in many areas as a secondary upper level impulse moves in.

For those areas along/ north of I-40, I am not going to hazard an accumulation forecast just yet. I want to see how the trends unfold today.

For the southern Piedmont, I think any accumulations of significance will become difficult to come by. However, I do certainly think there is some chance of some flakes flying before the precip ends. It would take more southward shifts in the modeling to put this area into the decent accumulation chances area.

Up in the mountains, especially the NW NC mountains, this could be a pretty big deal. It would not surprise me at all if some of the spots that really hit the jackpot (higher locations) exceeded 10".

Unless some drastic shifts take place, I fully expect winter weather products to be issued for northern NC, likely including the Triad and maybe even parts of the Triangle area.

By Monday morning, especially for the areas I-40 and northward, travel could definitely be pretty tricky as temps will be below freezing.