Good Thursday, everyone. It’s the day after Christmas and we are tracking a lot of rain ready to roll into the Commonwealth for the last weekend of the year. This heavy rain setup may even bring a local high water threat before we turn things toward winter as the new year arrives.
A few showers will be noted out there today, especially in the west and north. This stuff is pretty scattered.
Low pressure rolls up the Mississippi Valley Friday and drags a weak front toward the region. Showers and thunderstorms rumble across the state during this time with gusty winds and locally heavy rains.
That front slows down near our region as another storm system develops to our southwest and rides into the region from Saturday night through early Monday. This is when fairly widespread heavy rain and a few strong storms show up across our part of the world.
The models still handle this second system a bit differently. The GFS is faster and farther west with the system…
The EURO is a little flatter and slower with the low…
Widespread 1″-3″ rains will be noted through the weekend with the potential for a stripe of 4″ or more showing up. This would be enough to cause high water concerns and I’m still watching this area as the greatest threat…
Here’s a look at some of the rainfall totals from the models…
Another system then rolls through here by New Year’s Eve and unleashes a much colder pattern behind it. As expected, the models handle system differently and, in turn, handle the transition back to winter differently.
The GFS is the farthest north with the New Year’s Eve system and then follows that up a day or two later with a southern storm system that swipes the region with a snow threat..
The Canadian has a similar track with the first system but is much colder behind it with snow showers kicking in for New Year’s Day. It then shows a clipper dropping in with light snow a few days later…
The EURO is farther south with the New Year’s low and weaker with anything coming behind it but still produces some light snows as the cold takes hold…
That’s some really cold air coming in with this but it’s nothing compared to the setup that arrives a few days later. Watch how deep this second trough gets on the GFS Ensembles…
The operational GFS says that’s the Polar Vortex…
That’s some serious cold lurking with that trough and we are likely to have multiple snow threats during the first week and change of the new year. The GFS Ensembles are showing this…
So are the Canadian Ensembles…
The EURO Ensembles don’t go out quite as far, but you can also see the snow potential…
Keep in mind, ensembles only show 10 to 1 ratio snowfall.
I’ll have updates later today. Until then, here are your tracking tools for the day…
Have a great day after Christmas and take care.
