Wednesday, February 09, 2011

How Much Snow Will Fall?

The above graph shows several models and how much snow each one is showing for Jonesboro using various methods to calculate the amounts. Click the image to enlarge. As you can see, it's not as easy as "looking at a model" to see what happens. Storm track, radar trends, temperature profiles, etc, etc factor into how much snow we will see. It's not easy, but possible. Yes, we change our forecast leading up to the storm based on new data. I'm not sure why that bothers people. The forecast will be "tweaked" as we get closer to the storm.

The snow is falling now. It started sticking fast and I started getting a little anxious about our forecast at first, but we're good. I went 2-4" for Jonesboro at 6:00 last night... then backed it down to 1-3". (Not a big deal"... Sarah this morning is going 2-5" areawide and I think that is good for now. Could a few spots get 6"? Sure, we mentioned that in all newscasts... Mainly SW of Jonesboro.

Here's the problem. It's a dry and powdery snow and is blowing around like crazy! It's going to be hard to measure. In a 10x10 square a person can measure a range of 5" easily! LOL

Here's the deal... the roads are going to be bad. Many people can sled. It's going to be cold. Whether you get 2-3" or 4-6", the result will be very similar. Even if you have 2"... I bet you can find a snow drift that measures much more! :)

Enjoy it! It happened... again.

Ryan

2 comments:

Pam Whitaker said...

Thank you, Ryan! You are doing a great job! The weather can change in an instant and people need to realize that, and that if we get more or less than what was "expected" it's not your fault! That's mother nature!! :)

Kevin said...

OK... radar to me looks like this event is almost over for Jonesboro????