Wednesday, February 18, 2009

All eyes on Saturday

It's hard to discuss the possibility of winter weather a mere 60 hours out when it's currently in the lower 70s, but we're in Memphis and it's February. Anything can happen! A cold front is passing through the region today, so the 70 degree weather will be a thing of the past in just a couple of hours. We're looking at high temps tomorrow a good 25 degrees colder than today with highs in the mid 40s! Mid 20s on Friday morning will definitely remind us that it is still winter.

The next storm system will be a quick-moving "clipper" that will dive out of the Midwest on a fast northwest flow, arriving in the Mid-South late Friday night and Saturday. With cold air in place and colder Arctic air accompanying the system, there is a real possibility for rain showers to turn to snow showers on Saturday. While I am not not predicting any sort of accumulation and timing is still not certain, there is a decent chance of seeing some of the white stuff on Saturday sometime. I'll continue to follow it and update the forecast and blog as things become more apparent. See the map below for this morning's GFS model run showing the near-surface freezing line in blue and the expected precipitation placement on Saturday afternoon. Remember it doesn't have to be 32 or lower to snow!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Look at the NAM.. it bumps those chances up quite a bit.

Meteorologist Erik Proseus said...

Ben - Yes, the NAM got bullish there for a couple of runs, but as of 12Z today the NAM and GFS are in pretty good agreement on timing and amount. More on that in my next blog... ;-)

--Erik