East's Weather Page: 2016-01-10

Rain later today, a little light snow for some Sunday AM...

>> Friday, January 15, 2016

...And quite cold Monday and Tuesday.

I cover it all in detail in today's video:

>> Thursday, January 14, 2016

Please see today's video above for an in-depth discussion of our upcoming weather.

Today is the pick weather day of the week with sunshine all day long and highs climbing well up into the 50s. Great stuff overall. Lows tonight drop into the 30s.

Our next low pressure will lift from the northern Gulf of Mexico to near the Carolina coast tomorrow into tomorrow night. The result locally will be a healthy shield of rain spreading in from the southwest by tomorrow afternoon and then exiting tomorrow night. I am sticking with the idea of a lot of our rain totals winding up in the 0.5" to 1" range.

Saturday's weather then looks pretty nice with highs in the 50s again.

Our next potential system will then try to emerge from the Gulf to off the Carolina coast Saturday night into Sunday. I am sticking with the forecast idea I have had of some light snow being possible in parts of North Carolina (and maybe far NW SC) mainly Sunday morning. This does not look like a major storm system, and 'light' is the key word.

A big-time blast of arctic air will plunge in here following the system with highs struggling to make it above freezing in the piedmont Monday and Tuesday and some lows getting down into the teens.

Cold today, warmer tomorrow, wet later Friday, and watching our little Sunday system...

>> Wednesday, January 13, 2016

All of the details in a comprehensive edition of the video today:

Weekend System

>> Tuesday, January 12, 2016

First of all, the system Friday will move through in the form of a decent rain event. The exception to this is up in the mountains where I think a lot of the precipitation might fall in the form of a very wet snow.

Now, on to Saturday night-Sunday. With the 12z run today, the GFS operational continued its trend on the 0z and 6z runs of making the system a little stronger, and therefore, the associated precipitation field further to the north into the chilly air. The result was a light snow from parts of northern MS, AL, GA, parts of TN, and into the western Carolinas.

Here's a couple of snapshots:

On the European model, the system remains weaker and shunted well to the south.

Why the difference? I think the biggest difference is the piece of upper level energy that drives the system is simply stronger on the GFS than its European counterpart. On the GFS, the system evolves like this:

On the European, the system is weaker, less consolidated, and the energy winds up getting split in the Gulf of Mexico instead of turning the corner as a consolidated system up the coast as it interacts with the northern branch:

The Canadian is similar to the Euro...even weakening the energy totally as it get absorbed into the big trough early next week.

Looking to the ensembles, the GFS has support from a number of the members in its suite. There are a few members of the European suite that print out a nice snow for parts of the region, but most are dry.

What will happen? It's simply too soon to tell. The Euro is still king, and the Canadian has had a pretty nice winter to this point. So, as I did on the air today, I would still lean my forecast in the more suppressed direction...i.e. more in the Euro/ Canadian direction.

However, this is a weather scenario where the GFS could score the coup. It has been locking onto this idea for a while now, and it is not a scenario where you inherently toss out the GFS in favor of the Euro.

So, it bears watching. We will likely not know anything with a great deal of certainty until late in the work week and the associated piece of upper level energy begins to get better sampled by the observation network.