Good afternoon, everyone. A light system continues to work into the region, but the primary focus of the forecast is on the setup rolling in here just in time for Christmas. This can bring snow and arctic cold our way, but will it be enough for a true White Christmas? I can’t answer that, but the setup is there.

Light rain is pushing into the western half of the state right now and will continue to move east through the evening. Here are your radars to follow along…

A little bit of light snow looks to mix in with this across the eastern half of the state, but the models differ on exactly where. The following maps are being used to illustrate where each model thinks will see flakes, not actual accumulation…

NAM

Hi Res NAM

GFS

Most of that is late tonight while we are sleeping, with a few showers back with us on Sunday.

I have no changes on my thoughts for how Christmas week may play out. An arctic front moves in here Wednesday night into early Christmas Eve Day as one low moves into the Great Lakes. A second low is likely to develop along the front, but exactly where that happens is going to be the determining factor on the how much snow we can get around here. At worst, this would be some festive flakes. At best, we would be talking about a rare Christmastime snowstorm. Of course, there’s a lot of room between those two extreme scenarios so keep that in mind. 🙂

Here’s the potential setup…

The GFS continues to be as consistent as you will ever find the model (I’m sure this will jinx it)…

The GFS loves a White Christmas around here. It also loves bitterly cold temps. Here are the numbers from 1pm Christmas Eve through 7pm Christmas Day…

Wind Chills during the same time…

The EURO is no longer showing the ridiculous solution it had with the last run, but one can easily understand that by knowing the bias of the model. It’s still not quick enough with the second low forming…

The Canadian Model has bounced around a lot and the current run has about 10 different lows that it has no idea what to do with…

 

If we look at the individual members that make up the 21 member GFS Ensembles, we see several of them with healthy snow look…

 

Behind all this is a pattern that skews colder than normal to end December and begin January. Throw in several systems rolling across the country and the potential for more arctic shots, and you can have some more fun systems to track…

I will have another update later this evening, so check back. Have a good one and take care.