Good Thursday everyone. Here we are a few days from the weekend and what will be a big winter storm across the eastern half of the country and it is difficult to get a good handle on the evolution and primary storm track. Until we get all the players actually on the playing field… we don’t know exactly what play mother nature will be calling.

By that I mean the energy that will cause the storm is currently in a part of the world where the models have to guess at its strength. Once this energy moves into the western part of the country… the models should converge on a similar solution. That probably won’t happen until Friday.

In the meantime… we had quite the model shuffle while you were sleeping. The GFS looks like the old European Model as the new European Model looks more like the old GFS. Confused? Well… you are not alone as the model flips have been pretty wild. The issue is there will be a broad area of low pressure initially on Saturday. This will stretch from Arkansas northward toward Chicago. The difference in model solutions boils down to some of the models trying to consolidate this low into a stronger system across the Ohio Valley while others weaken it out allowing for a stronger storm to form across the mid atlantic states.

The European has given up on the lakes low and now shows the latter scenario…



The Canadian model is broken down into shorter time increments so you can better see what it does with the low…



That takes the low right over Kentucky and weakens it out over West Virginia as a stronger low takes over along the east slopes of the Appalachian mountains and rides northward with a tremendous backlash of snows in our region. Keep in mind… both the European and Canadian models had been taking a fairly strong low into the great lakes.

The GFS Ensembles basically show a combination of the Canadian and European Models as we have a low pressure crossing the region and weakening out. This gives way to a powerful low developing across the mid atlantic states that rides northward…


 
The UKMET has something similar with a weakening low giving way to a powerful storm in the mid atlantic…



After looking at all of the above models… the one thing that does stand out is they bring a low pressure across Kentucky and weaken it out allowing for a big storm to crank somewhere in the mid atlantic states. The timing and exact tracks of both storms still have to be ironed out as that will, obviously, have a big impact on the impact the storm has on us.

Here is what I continue to feel confident about…

– Rain will break out across the region Saturday. There is a chance this rain starts out as a period of frozen precip early Saturday.

– The rain will change to snow from west to east quickly late Saturday night into Sunday morning.

– There should be a very good period of snow Sunday into Monday morning with accumulations LIKELY.

– Bitterly cold air moving in Sunday into Sunday night will increase the liquid to snow ratios. A normal 10 to 1 ratio can be as high as 40 to 1 or higher given the depth of cold air. That can really crank up snow totals… especially in the east and southeast where upslope snows will continue through Tuesday.

– Thermometers will crash Sunday as arctic air moves in. This could lead to a quick ice up from the earlier rains that have now changed to snow.

– Highs Monday and Tuesday should stay in the teens with lows in the single digits.

– Winds will crank up Sunday and Monday and blow around whatever snow falls. These gusty winds will create wind chill temps well below zero.

This will be another day of multiple posts as we track the latest model twists and turns. I will also get much more specific with my thoughts and break the weekend down in greater detail. For now… your friendly weather dude needs to catch up on some zzz’s.

Have a great Thursday and take care.