Thursday, February 16, 2012: Bright & Calm Friday...More Data for the Weekend Rain/ Snow Event
Good evening! While conditions will be quiet through Saturday afternoon, we will be closely watching the potential for a snow event Saturday night into Sunday.
Depending on the track of this system, a couple of scenarios are setting up.
This low pressure system could track further North, into northern GA, and bring some decent snowfall totals to our area.
OR the low could track through central GA, and bring minimal, if any, snow to our area.
Let's break down the models...starting with the NAM, which has not had good run-to-run consistency.
Overnight Saturday into Sunday.
Southern KY begins to see the rain...the freezing line is still well to the North.
Early Sunday morning.
The freezing line is pushing into Central KY, changing some of the rain to snow.
Sunday evening.
All of Kentucky below freezing...light snow for central and eastern KY.
This is the NAM's forecasted snow totals...Showing around 3-7 inches. Again, this model has NOT had good consistency.
On to the GFS...
Saturday evening.
The GFS brings the rain about 6 hours earlier than the NAM. I think this is a bit too fast.
Sunday evening.
The GFS brings the cold air in by Sunday morning, changing the rain to all snow.
The GFS is bring some accumulating snow all the way into northern TN with a bullseyes into central and eastern KY of 6+".
The track is clearly not set in stone on this storm.
Finally, the latest in-house microcast data.
Changing the rain to snow in the Bluegrass by 2am...This trend continues will southern KY mainly seeing plain rain. This set up is bringing around 1-3" for the Bluegrass and eastern KY.
The critical time frame to determine the track will be tomorrow as this storm kicks out of the SW. There are very little upper level observing stations over Mexico, so storms that move through this area are very tough for the computer models to handle.
Another thing to note: Warmer temperatures over the last few days have pushed the pavement temperatures back into the mid 40s for most of the area. This means if snow was to fall, it would have to come down pretty hard to accumulate but that is certainly a possibility.
With track changes likely, this storm must, and will be, watched closely!.
Stay tuned...Geoff will have the very latest data on GMK Friday from 5-7am.
Lauren
