Friday, January 23, 2009

A roller coaster week, and now it's all downhill

Remember back to Tuesday morning when snow was falling on many of you? It looked like a Midwestern winter day, only without existing snow cover on the ground - but it sure was pretty! Well, things change in a hurry, and two days later we were basking in the lower and mid 60s yesterday afternoon! Another beautiful winter day today (I even had my car sunroof cracked just for the fresh air this afternoon) with highs again in the 60s, but the top of the hill has been reached and now we head down...

A pretty good winter cold front arrives this evening and signals a change to the weather with temps falling into the 30s overnight and wind chills in the 20s. Some light rain is possible, particularly over north MS, but it should all stay liquid. By morning, if any precip is left around, a bit of sleet or some snowflakes are not out of the question, though confidence is low enough to not include it in the forecast. Temp will remain nearly steady tomorrow in the upper 30s and Saturday night fall back into the 20s. The dry streak continues Sunday and most of Monday with highs in the 40s.

Monday night brings some interesting possibilities as precipitation overruns a cold front and moves in from the west. If Monday night temperatures are just right, we could see some light freezing rain. We'll see. The mid-week period looks wet with a stalled out frontal boundary in the area and low pressure systems riding along it, bringing rain chances especially Tuesday and Thursday if models are correct. A note on models in this scenario though: they aren't typically good at timing events this far in advance with the atmosphere setting up the way it is. By the end of next week, we should start to see another warming trend.

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