Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Could be a little messy: A southern system will really bring in an interesting situation over the next 18 to 24 hours. Heavier colder air will sit on the surface today and tomorrow with a weather system moves in from the south. This weather system brings warmer air in front of it. Instead of the warmer air coming down to the surface it will stay above the colder air and that creates a problem.

I've used this diagram before but it's worth a dusting off and using again. The higher pressure at the surface represents the colder air which is heavier and the low at 500 mb and 300 mb is warmer air. This is what we call an inversion, the opposite of normal with warm air not at the surface but at the lower levels of the atmosphere. The problem then is that we have liquid precipitation and freezing rain.

My best estimates right now is that we see snow late this afternoon followed by some freezing rain and sleet overnight turning to all snow by daybreak on Wednesday. Ice accumulations could be about a tenth of an inch early tomorrow morning before turning to snow. Could be a real mess.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This seems to be happening often as of late. Any ideas as to why we appear to but stuck in this pattern?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for keeping on top of this, Greg!

Greg Shoup said...

I don't know if you can really call this a pattern. (Even it seems like we have been hit hard so far this winter with ice storms). A historical pattern would be over several years not a matter of days or months. That's why the whole global warming debate is looked at with doubtful eyes by many meteorologists.