Weather It Is (On a Pin)

Good Afternoon:

Highlight: Heavy rain Thursday into Thursday night.  Strong or even Gale Force winds Thursday afternoon into Thursday night.

The type of weather we should expect on Thursday in Jerusalem and surrounding mountains will depend on the interaction of a storm moving across Scandinavia today with a storm that is currently moving into western Siberia right now.  As the latter slows down, it is forecast to be drawn into the storm moving through Scandinavia tonight, adding its winter fury of frigid air to the combing storm.  Together they will plunge thousands of miles southward into the eastern Mediterranean.  Just how far south and how much cold air is drawn into the first storm will determine our weather on Thursday.

Yesterday, the new version of the GFS forecast conditions for snow late Thursday into Friday morning.  However, the ECMWF did not.  Now, each forecast has some variation of the other, but none are really cold enough for an accumulating snow.

We know that there should be very heavy rain Thursday morning into Thursday night, with very strong winds.  We know that there is the possibility for hail and wet snow at times, especially towards evening.

But, we don't know just where the axis of the plunging trough will be or just how south it will get. True, we do know that it will be near us, but in the scale of things we're relatively small compared to the amplitude of the storm, and it has a pretty sharp (west to east) wave-length at that. Basically, forecasting weather here is at times like trying to forecast weather on the tip of a pin.  Of course, this is what we should be telling you (the reader), but greater certainty may have to wait until tomorrow morning, if that.

Stay tuned,

Barry Lynn