Forecast:
Saturday (3/7): Partly cloudy, with highs around 40, west winds of 10 mph with gusts to 40 mph.
Sunday (3/8): Partly cloudy, light snow possible, with highs in the upper 30s, southwest winds of 10 mph with gusts to 30 mph.
Summary:
Warm weekend, light snow possible on Sunday, next system comes in around Thursday.
Forecast Discussion:
Our patrol zone remains under the ridge of high pressure today through Saturday. This will bring very warm temperatures.
On Sunday, two weak systems approach our patrol zone, one from the southwest and one from the west. This system looks to exit our region too quickly to produce much snow (but it may cause a lot more snow in the Midwest). One unusual piece of this storm puzzle are the warm temperatures – which will mean the limited snow that does fall will be quite heavy. It’s more likely to snow in the afternoon or evening. Here are the Sunday model predictions:
2” per the American and Canadian Models
1” per the WRF and European Models
0.1” per the NAM Model
The next system comes from the southwest on Thursday. If this Thursday system was coming later in the year when low pressures tend to cutoff, I’d be optimistic about this one. However, it seems too early in the year for this one to be a big snow producer. Of course, 6 days away is getting close to forecast fairyland, so perhaps the system will produce more than it’s looking like it will do right now. I’m the glass half full type, I suppose. Here are the model predictions for the Thursday-ish system:
7” per the American Model, falling mostly on Thursday.
6.5” per the American Model, falling mostly on Thursday (4”), but snow through Saturday.
2” per the European Model, basically flurries from Wednesday through Saturday.
Retrospective Discussion:
It’s been warm and pleasant, as forecasted, so no lessons learned between Monday’s forecast and this forecast. Hopefully we’ll get more snow soon so I can write more interesting post-mortems.
-Jordan (Friday morning)
Note: Unless otherwise noted, all forecasts are for 10,000’ in exposed areas. References to American Model are the American (GFS) Model. References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model. References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model. References to the European Model are the European (ECMWF) Model.
