Weather It Is (Winter Weather Warning and Winter Storm Watch)

Good Early Morning:

Since last week (Friday), the GFS and the its ensemble have been almost unanimous in predicting a major winter storm to affect our area starting Sunday night and continuing into Thursday.  Unlike our previous rain events where cold air circulated around high pressure to the north, this storm is associated with a deep trough stretching from the far north to the the "far" south.  You can see this in the maps shown at www.weather.unisys.com.



The map shows our weather at 850 mb Tuesday night at 2 A.M. 

It is a bit unusual to be able to predict a winter storm so far in advance, but there have also been some apparent improvements in the global forecast models that depict the general picture we use to make our detailed forecasts.

Right now, it looks like heavy rain on Tuesday will transition into heavy wet snow Wednesday morning and then become a heavy dry snow in the mountainous areas from South to North by the evening and continue into Thursday.  We need to be closer to this event to be able to say more about snow amounts, but we can say with (hopeful) certainty that this will be the coldest storm to impact our area in many years.  It should also be the snowiest.

Barry Lynn