Fresh surge of arctic air today....wintry weather chances tomorrow....

>> Thursday, January 24, 2013

Here is today's video... discussion below the video....



Blustery north winds will be with us at times today as a fresh surge of cold, dry arctic air arrives. Temperatures will not move much through the day, and wind chills will be biting.

Wintry weather tomorrow...

I don't have much in the way of changes to my thinking on tomorrow's system. The airmass we will have in place will be very dry, and that dry air will chew up a lot of the precipitation from this system.

However, this could be your classic event where the impacts on travel are far greater than you might expect with light precipitation amounts due to cold ground conditions.

This will be a tricky system in terms of precip types. Not only will the precip amounts be light, but there will be a warm nose of temperatures aloft (750-850mb). Due to that warm nose, and then the very cold air below it, I think many locations will see sleet.

Some specifics...please make sure you pay attention to the bottom end of these ranges below... I think the lower end is more likely to verify.

For the Virginia border areas roughly north of I-40.... I am thinking mainly snow...maybe in the 1" to at most 3" range.

I-40 down to roughly Hwy 64.... a snow and sleet mixture.... a dusting to maybe 1-2" of snow/ sleet.

Southern piedmont into the Upstate and north Georgia....sleet/ freezing rain mix with a glazing of 0.10" or so possible...more in the SW NC mountains into NE GA.

Any area is fair game to see the precip end as a little bit of light freezing rain or drizzle as moisture leaves the snow growth region aloft.

Let me make sure this point makes it across..... the airmass is very, very dry. If this forecast busts, it will bust on the low side due to very little if any precipitation.

This is not a big winter storm.... there just isn't enough precipitation. However, due to the very cold ground, some travel issues will probably develop by tomorrow afternoon and evening in some areas.


4 comments:

Anonymous 8:45 AM  

What is the likelihood that the RPM model will verify? Esp for eastern NC since all models have backed off on our winter chances. ~Brandon

Anonymous 8:45 AM  

What is the likelihood that the RPM model will verify? Esp for eastern NC since all models have backed off on our winter chances. ~Brandon

Matthew East 9:25 AM  

That's tough to say..... a lot of those amounts on the RPM are very, very light though...

Anonymous 9:34 AM  

I noticed the RPM actually did put down some accumulation though unlike other models. Maybe we can get the 12Z NAM back from yesterday or a more southern movement to get rid of the warm nose. ~Brandon

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