Monday, January 26, 2009

Forecast update for Memphis metro - 4:00pm Monday

No significant changes to my forecast this afternoon. I still expect rain to develop this evening with the possibility of a little light sleet mixed in for the first couple of hours, but then becoming all rain overnight. The only exceptions could be Tipton county and northern Crittenden county, AR, where the temperature could touch the freezing mark overnight and some freezing rain is possible. (North of those locations, an ice storm is a-brewin'!) In Shelby, DeSoto, and Fayette counties, it's currently 37-40 degrees. When precip starts, I expect that to drop a few degrees, but remain above freezing and holding in the 34-37 range overnight. A Freezing Rain Advisory is posted for Shelby, Tipton, Fayette, Crittenden and points north beginning tomorrow at 6am.

Tomorrow = rain. Tuesday night, it gets tricky. I'll save more in-depth discussion for later, but it does appear a changeover to freezing rain and/or sleet will occur during the late evening hours, then possibly to all snow by dawn. Amounts of winter precipitation will depend on when that changeover takes place. It could be interesting, especially in northern suburbs... stay tuned.

I have links to Mid-South road conditions and school system websites in the right-hand section of this blog. If and when metro school systems close, I'll try and post it here.

3 comments:

Curt said...

well hurry up and let the cat out of the bag for tomorrow night there Erik!

Anonymous said...

It's already hit freezing here in Ripley (TN)..

Meteorologist Erik Proseus said...

Ben in Ripley - unfortunately, it looks like you may be in for a long 36 hours. Hopefully the damage is not too bad. We had a bad ice storm here in Memphis back in '94 that took weeks to restore power and clear downed trees.

Curt - you can't rush perfection... ;-) Look for a discussion regarding Tuesday night by 10:30am Tuesday.

--Erik, MemphisWeather.net