Thursday, February 28, 2008

Warm Weekend, then Snow???

Could we really see snow on Monday night??? If you look at the GFS snowfall estimates from http://www.wxcaster.com/, you would think that a blizzard is going to hit parts of Region 8, but let's not get too excited yet!
It's still going to be a very tricky forecast. We have a strong cold front coming through that will likely drop the temperatures about 30 degrees. As the cold air comes in, a strong upper-level low barrels in, possibly spinning down enough cold air to support snow. See upper-level low on 500 mb map...
To really "zero in" on the small area that could see some snow, I like to look at the center of the low on the 700mb map. If you notice, it will be tracking right through Region 8. If this plays out, we could have rain to our north and south... but snow in northeast Arkansas. Weird huh...
One last image.... this is what might be happening at the surface. Freezing line to our SE and precipitation falling. If this happens, we could actually see some snow accumulate in Region 8... I'm not going to get excited about it yet. This is still several days out and it's a storm system that doesn't need to have accumulation forecasts tied to it until it actually starts snowing! It's a tricky one!

Take care,
Ryan

3 comments:

Karen H. said...

Good Morning Ryan,
I was watching you last night on the 10:00p.m. forecast and I'm with Craig and Lauren, let's don't get excited about this system. Let's just let it play out and see what happens. It seems you have been jinxing the Snow when we are forecast to have some and it goes all around us. LOL. So, let's just keep this one on the back burner with the lid shut tight for now. LOL. It is 53 degrees here in Caraway as I'm typing this at 4:10a.m. About the shaking yall felt the other day, I didn't feel it here in Caraway. I've been reading and seeing what you thought it was. I trust your judgement on what it was tho. I haven't heard of anyone saying anything about any shaking around here the other day either. Take care my friend and have a great day. May God Bless You and Yours.

Karen Horton
Caraway, AR

Jason H said...

The way this year is going, I would go with Thunder/Snow. I can see us under a *Severe Snowstorm Watch* for Monday night into Tuesday.:-)

I love March snows. It seems like the March snows I recall, the flakes are the size of half dollars. It is fun to watch, but they also add up super fast. I remember a March snow about 10-12 years ago, it snowed over 7 inches in less than 4 hours.

Have a great weekend !

Jason

Jason H said...

WOW, what a storm this is gonna be !!! I have seen a couple models say just SW of springfield could get 2" of rain, and 12-16 inches of snow ! :-0 ! Lots of Winter Sotrm Watches out. I guess it will be just a little too warm here ???