Good Friday, folks. Our day is starting out on a Frigid note, but things look to end pretty good with some sun and 30s for many. As we head into the final weekend of January, a big storm system is rolling our way and looks to bring a wintry mess by Saturday evening for some. This will be followed by a precip flip flop that features rain to snow to close out the month and begin February.
Temps this morning are deep into the low teens for many and a few single digits may even show up in the colder valleys.
Here’s a breakdown of the weekend/early week setup :
- Rain moves into western Kentucky Saturday and works eastward during the afternoon and evening. As this moves into central and eastern Kentucky, it may very well go over to a period of snow or a wintry mix.
- Areas of northern and northeastern Kentucky have the best chance of seeing accumulating snow, especially areas near Covington.
- How far south can we get this snow or mix to start? That’s the question of the day.
- All areas go over to rain quickly from southwest to northeast Sunday as low pressure works in and weakens.
- Once this low weakens and moves just to our east, temps crash quickly with snow wrapping back in here Sunday night.
- Periods of snow, snow showers and squalls will then be common Monday through early Tuesday for much of central and eastern Kentucky. Accumulations are likely during this time.
The EURO continues to be the most aggressive model with the cold on Saturday, leading to a farther south starting band of snow. Here’s the model for the duration of the event through Tuesday…
Here’s the Euro snowfall forecast just through Sunday afternoon…
The Canadian Model has a similar overall look…
You can see the really good looking wraparound snows on both models for Sunday night through Tuesday morning, but I’m using the snowfall maps to only focus on the front end potential. This is the Canadian snow map through Sunday afternoon…
The Short Range Canadian through Sunday morning…
The NAM for the same time…
The GFS appears to be having GFS problems with this run…
I hope to have some specific maps out for the front end and back end snows coming up a little later today.
Milder air surges in for a few days by the end of next week, but that’s ahead of another strong cold front. This unleashes more colder than normal weather for much of the country…
Updates come your way later today. Have a good one and take care.
Wow… according to the Euro and Canadian models, all of Northern IL, including the Chicago Metro area, are in the prime sweet spot for one heck of a snowstorm from Saturday night through Sunday. Anywhere from 10 to 13 inches is predicted throughout the area!
The GFS seems to be the lone holdout here, as it’s predicting only 4 to 7 inches of snow for Northern IL. Well, like CB said, the GFS appears to be having GFS problems handling this storm.
After the disappointment of getting only two inches of snow earlier this week when a much more significant snowfall had been forecast, I’m ready for the 10-13 inches! Hopefully the GFS comes around later today.
I hope you get the predicted Snowstorm this weekend. Sounds like the Snowstorms we use to get in South Central Indiana in the distance past.
I was in Aurora Monday night and it was snowing pretty hard. I was happy to see that I-294 was scrapped. SW. Suburbs the snow was light. I was fortunate to be able to make it back
to Louisville early in the AM.
Yeah, the Aurora area received between 4 and 5 inches of snow. IDOT did a great job of plowing the expressways in the Chicago area during this event since the intensity of the snow eased at times.
Looks like we are the fence unless we cherry pick the more southern solutions. We seem mainly observers for our friends in the Cincinnati market. Selfish spin time- No shoveling is a win!
This one is going to be interesting, the gradient is so tight that I could end up with nothing or maybe as much as 3″ if everything goes the way I want it to.