Good evening, everyone. We have one more bitterly cold night ahead, with all eyes on a winter weather system moving in Sunday night and Monday.

Here are my latest thoughts:

  • A wintry mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain develops from west to east Sunday evening into early Monday morning.
  • It is incredible difficult to pinpoint any one precipitation type for any location. The same can also be said for duration of each precipitation type.
  • Ground temperatures are well below freezing, so it won’t take much of whatever falls to create slick roads where you live.
  • The greatest travel impact comes early Monday morning.
  • Let’s clear something up… This does NOT look like an ice storm.

The various forecast models are not fully capable of  grasping the amount of low-level cold air, nor do they understand the whole frozen ground concept. Normal forecast model algorithms aren’t going to be of much use.

Even if temps manage to creep above freezing ahead of the precipitation moving in, those numbers will drop as precipitation starts falling. The frozen ground will also mean the above air temps won’t do much for keeping untreated roads, sidewalks or parking lots from becoming icy.

That said, we can still see if any model is close to grasping the setup. The Canadian Model has done VERY well in recent weeks. It really sees the freezing rain potential…

The European Model had not been seeing very much of the frozen precipitation leading up to this. The latest run is starting to see the setup. Here are the snow and ice maps from the last run…

While this system is NOT a major storm, it is likely to be a HIGH impact travel system late Sunday night into early Monday.

Looking farther down the road, we continue to see the setup for a wild end of the week. Temps can make a run toward the 60s before arctic air and winter weather return just hours later…

I will have your full update with a New Call For Snow/Icefall coming later tonight.

Enjoy the evening and take care.