Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Cold Reality: Not only is the bitter cold a problem this morning but another weather system is moving toward the area from the south. You can see this system just moving into the pan handle of Texas early this morning. The question on these weather systems is always the track, or which way the system will move. If it moves far enough north it could bring an accumulating snowfall to the area.

This model shows that the track of the low is through the southern part of the state and it looks like it will be far enough north to get some snow in northeastern Indiana. Interestingly enough one of the numerical output models I use has about a half an inch of snow. So it looks like this one is going to be close with most of the snow to the south.

As the week goes on: It should be rather quiet through mostly of the rest of the week, but Friday is a different story.

This the situation on Friday. Warm air ahead of a weather system has highs near +9 that could translate to about 49 degrees on the surface. So it will begin as rain on Friday, but much like the last system that moved through the area yesterday there is some cold air and we could be seeing snow by Friday night.
You can see another southern system moving north, but this time temperatures will be cold enough for some accumulating snowfall.

Then it gets very cold as bitter cold arctic air brings 850 mb down to -17 C. This will mean teens and 20s as highs to begin the week next week.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So who at the Climate Prediction Center made the forecast for a warmer than average winter in the Midwest...Al Gore?

Greg Shoup said...

Interesting take. The long term forecasts are not worth much in my book. However, I have seen below normal Decembers and temperatures above normal the rest of the winter.

Anonymous said...

I see where they are still holding out for a warmer Dec-Jan-Feb, so we can hope!