Time To Look At The Next Storm

As I type this, the snow is starting to end at my house and it's time to focus on the next storm. Today's storm was a doozy with more snow in our NW counties and more ICE in our southern counties. Here at my house and in Jonesboro, we saw every type of preciptation!

 As of 9:45 PM on Sunday night, I estimate about 3,000 without power in Region 8 due to freezing rain bringing down power lines. Most of the power issues were South and East of Jonesboro.

Now, it's time to chat about Tuesday's storm. Tuesday is a day we have highlighted for icing since last Tuesday. The models have been very consistent with freezing air at the surface and a layer of warm air aloft. This appears to be a freezing rain setup. The timing of this storm has been a little questionable, but the models are coming into agreement that we will have freezing rain falling across most of Region 8 by lunchtime on Tuesday. The GFS model has been VERY consistent. This is the GFS at lunch time on Tuesday:

Notice, the surface low is passing south of us and we are on the "cold" side of the storm. The red line is the freezing line. Everything above that line is 32 or below. The pink area is freezing rain. Freezing rain falls as liquid and freezes on contact, causing a glaze of ice on exposed surfaces.

The NAM is similar, here is the "simulated radar" product from the NAM on Tuesday morning. All of the precipitation north of the red line on this map should be wintry weather:

So, Tuesday's forecast has not changed for 5 days. That does not mean we can't be thrown a curve ball, but that's what we are expected at this time. Power line damage may become a problem again.

I'll have a new blog on Monday that will be more detailed and I'll break down the bullet points of this storm.

Stay tuned!
Ryan