Good afternoon, gang. Its a busy forecast pattern, so I’m making a quick stop to keep you updated on how things stand for this first week of the new year.

It’s a very mild and windy day out there as temps shoot into the 60s. Showers and thunderstorms will overspread the region from the southwest later today into tonight. The overall severe threat is pretty low, but there is likely to be a corridor of very heavy rain setting up. This may cause some local high water concerns tonight.

Track away…

Once the arctic front moves in early Wednesday, it’s game on for some fun tracking of a potential winter weather makers. The first comes on Thursday, with a potential bigger system later Friday into Saturday.

That’s the system we find a lot of disagreement on. The GFS continues to have a very healthy system taking a southern track and then into the Mid-Attlatic…

gfs

The GFS has a crusher for the Tennessee Valley into the Mid-Atlantic states, with some big snows for parts of Kentucky…

gfs-snow

Again, that’s one run of one model. Each and every time you look at a new version of these models, they will change from this far out.

If you believe in the famous north and west trend of systems as we get closer, that’s right where you want this to be at this point.

The GFS Ensembles are also targeting the lower Ohio Valley, Tennessee Valley into the Mid-Atlantic states…

gfs-snow-2

The Canadian Model isn’t buying what the GFS is cooking. It brings a swath of 1″-3″ snows across the state on Thursday…

canadian

The follow up system then gets crushed…

canadian-2

Why the difference in how the models handle the second system? Much of it may be with how the Thursday system plays out. The weaker that is, the better the chance the follow up system can grow into something big.

The Friday/Saturday system comes from a disturbance forecast to be near Washington state on Thursday. Watch how the GFS takes that across the country and keeps it fairly in tact…

gfs

Now, watch how the Canadian Model takes that same system and totally shears it out, leaving nothing in tact…

canadian

If you want a big winter storm around here, you want to see that system cross the country and stay in tact. If you don’t want a winter storm, hope it gets crushed by the northern branch of the jet stream digging in.

Which solution will win out? I can’t answer that at the moment, and suspect it won’t be until tomorrow or early Wednesday before the models get a firm grasp on it all.

I will update things later today. Make it a great day and take care.