Good Friday, folks. Are you ready for some snow? Don’t answer that, its rhetorical, of course you are! 😁❄ We have rounds of snow showers, squalls and light snow on tap for the weekend and we are likely to put snow on the ground on more than one occasion. That doesn’t mean this is a big snowfall, but it’s a pretty wintry setup.
Before we get to the breakdown of the weekend, we are tracking a band of rain and snow across the eastern half of the state. This can put down some light accumulations, especially in the high mountains. Here are your radars…
Once this moves through, a period of dry and partly sunny weather shows up through the early part of the afternoon. That can spike temps toward the low 40s for a short time. From there, the winter pattern takes control. Here’s how we roll with it:
- Snow showers and squalls develop late this afternoon and evening. These can put down some hit and run accumulations and reduce visibilities.
- Periods of light snow with embedded snow squalls then take control tonight into Saturday. This will continue through early Sunday.
- Another potent upper level low spins through here late Sunday and Monday with another increase in light snow and snow squalls.
- All of this means accumulating snows through the weekend, but this isn’t a big event in terms of accumulations.
- Road conditions may go from wet to white to wet to white to wet to white over the weekend. For that reason, Winter Weather Advisories need to go up this evening through Monday. Just put them out and let them ride to give the public an increased awareness of the setup. There’s no reason to try to piecemeal these or try to time them out and the WKYT weather research shows people only respond to headlines.
I’m going to keep the First Call For Snowfall map going for now…
The models have a little more robust signal through Monday…
GFS
NAM through 7am Monday…
CANADIAN
EURO
GFS ENSEMBLES
I will drop by with your normal updates later today. Until then, make it a good one and take care.
Thank you Mr Bailey for always being on top.of the weather situation! So appreciated!
We had about a quarter inch of cold rain on Thursday afternoon and evening across the Chicago Metro Area before it changed to snow later at night. Temps are still around 34 degrees though early this morning so the snow didn’t accumulate. The forecast calls for off and on snow showers today through tonight, and again on Sunday through Monday afternoon, but accumulations are going to be light, with maybe an inch to an inch and a half by Monday if we’re lucky, as the temps get colder by Sunday.
I think a lot of you guys in Kentucky will see more of an accumulation than we will in the Chicago area.
Still no sign of any Arctic plunge of cold air though, as the extended forecast through next Thursday calls for temps to be around 30-33 degrees for highs in the Chicago area.
Mike, it’s really been uneventful here lately. It was suppose to rain last night a 70% chance and all we got was 0.02 inches.
Snow Flurries and Snow Squalls or snow showers are forecast for tonight through Saturday noon and then a weaker system for Sunday. This morning the first system doesn’t look as potent as it did last evening for my area of Central Kentucky. Best Snow chances are to my Southeast towards the Virginia boarder.
Frigid Arctic Air that was suppose to invade the lower 48 did not pan out and I’m glad it’s not here because it would have been a dry cold and Snow less with an Ice Storm on the return flow off the Gulf.
I have not heard one meteorologist say “You want to know what happen to the Arctic Air it’s in Europe and Asia.” Why aren’t they reporting this ?
The Arctic air can stay in the Arctic.
Yeah, You don’t need Arctic Air to have a Major Snowstorm, but you need phasing.
RIP winter
I’m going to wait and see how much Snow we accumulate in my county of Taylor this weekend before commenting myself to RIP WINTER.
I’m hoping that we may get one or two Heavy Snows in February or March ? Not going to hold my breath on it though. LOL
Just for fun I went back to January 15th 2020 (worse year ever in my life time) and the weather pattern is basically the same except we had a rare White Christmas in Eastern Kentucky.
Guess you could say we’re at the peak of winter.Parts of EKY probably just needs a couple of inches to reach it’s average if you count the snow in December.Still seems like winter has yet to arrive.Been in a good pattern as far as blocking with -AO and-NAO but the pacific drives the bus.Good blocking pattern slowly wasting.
This morning I was watching WKYT live news and they showed the Snow falling outside the studio. It was coming down at a moderate rate.
Here in Central Kentucky according to the Mesonet we had 0.06 inches of Rain. (updated)
Checked the Saint Louis Radar and precipitation (don’t know what form it was) but, it was moving Southeast toward our area.
Hey Chris, I’m also looking at kyt 7 day,,, it doesn’t look like true ARTIC air is coming?? It looks like low , mid 30’s… this doesn’t seem to be a big change from this past week, just let us know what you think