Good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to go ahead and drop by a little earlier than normal to talk about tomorrow’s snow system and to throw out a First Call For Snowfall map. Our system seems to be pretty well behaved, but there are some signs this may end up a little stronger before all is said and done.
Snow develops across western Kentucky and moves east Wednesday into Wednesday night. This looks to increase in coverage and intensity the farther east it gets. Here’s my First Call For Snowfall…
Now, this is the First Call and I’m sure I will have to modify this later in the day as our system comes into better focus. If anything, the potential is there to expand that 2″-4″ farther north and west into the state.
This is something the GFS is really hinting at…
The average of the 21 member GFS Ensembles are even more emphatic about this potential…
The Canadian is also on it…
Short Range Canadian…
The NAM Fam is a little more blotchy looking…
A few notes:
- This will likely become a high impact system for travel. Even if we get melting flakes on roads to start, a rapid drop in temps will cause a quick freeze up of all that water on roads.
- Some areas may have snow covered roads for a while.
- Temps drop through the 20s as the snow starts and wind up in the teens by Thursday morning.
- Single digit wind chills are a good bet by Thursday morning.
The weekend setup continues to look like a snow/mess maker to rain then back to snow…
GFS
I’m not fully sold on the front end snow later Saturday, but I’m loving the look from Sunday night through Tuesday. That setup can produce some big time northwest flow snows across central and eastern Kentucky.
I will have the latest on WKYT-TV starting at 4pm and will update the snow map as needed on air through the evening. I will also have another full KWC update this evening.
Have a good one and take care.
Thank you as always, Chris. Last evening was crazy in east KY. We had tons of heavy rain, lightning, thunder, wind, and even some hail… on the 25th of January. Super weird. I remember when that kind of weather in January was just about unimaginable.
The northwest flow on the backside of the weekend storm looks promising. I’ll cross my fingers we see a little accumulation from that setup here in the hills. The upslope effect can put down a quick inch or two, and often end up being the source of most of our accumulating snows these days.
Best wishes to all on this sunny Tuesday.
In my opinion it looks like another difficult and confusing forecast for Snow.
The euro and euro ensemble have me excited for this weekends storm, I just hope it’s not false hope like it has been every other time over the last 5 years, but it’s not everyday the euro ensemble mean is 5 inches this far out. It’s still 4-5 days away so I know it will likely change and leave me with yet another cold rain.
Chicago and the Northern suburbs got hit the hardest by far with snow last night and today thanks to lake enhancement, and there was a sharp cutoff from north to south in snow totals. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport received 5.8 inches of snow while some locations in the northern suburbs received around 7 inches. Here in the SW suburbs where I am, the snow compacted down to only around two inches.
Again, a far cry from the 6 to 9 inches that was predicted areawide on Sunday. At least there was enough for me to shovel!
The 5.8 inches that fell at O’Hare was the largest two-day total there since November of 2018.
The storm system coming in this weekend looks like it has potential to be another accumulating snow for Northern IL, as it now has a colder look than it did a few days ago. We’ll see how the forecast evolves with that one over what areas get the heaviest snow.