Good afternoon, all. The wintry mix across the west and south is winding down with a lot of clouds and cold air left for the rest of the day. A few snowflakes will be possible across the entire region, but nothing of any consequence.

We’re a week away from Christmas, so let’s look ahead at our snow chances.

The southern system for the weekend will deliver a glancing blow of winter our way, but it’s turning out more complex than that. Here’s the GFS…

GFS

It was just a few days ago that model had it raining in Chicago from this very same system. My distrust of the models is well placed and I can sometimes correct their biases… sometimes. Not all the time, obviously. 🙂 Anyway, I’m seeing another bias of the GFS coming into play from Tuesday into Wednesday… the progressive bias. That keeps the storm from bombing out, but still produces plenty of wind, cold and snows…

GFS 2

The High Resolution GFS continues to show the bomb for the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes…

GFS 3

That’s a monster of a storm system that blanket the area in high winds and blowing snow into Christmas Day.

The Canadian Model by Wednesday morning certainly is going in that same direction…

Canadian

So, even with the most progressive of solutions (the old GFS), you still get snow and gusty winds. That’s probably the weakest possible solution with this type of setup, and I wouldn’t complain a bit with that for Christmas. 🙂

BTW… another storm follows this one up by next Friday or Saturday. That one is likely to be pushed by true arctic air.

I will update things this evening. Take care.