Central Ohio's Pre-Nor'easter Snow

In my last post I told everyone to keep an eye on that Monday to Tuesday time frame coming up for a chance of some accumulating March snow. Here we are less than 24 hours out, and I think we have a good idea what could happen.

The Setup
The Nor'easter will be a mix of a clipper-like system dropping out of the Plains, and a northern Gulf system riding up the coast, phasing in to a bombed out storm. What'll bring our snow chances is the Plains system.

Here's an animation of the Euro model showing how the low will actually "die down" as it passed our area. That's because the actual low pressure center is phasing to the east coast. It's during this weakening trend that we could see lower snow totals, before one more ramp up of snow as this strengthens and becomes the Nor'easter:

So then the question becomes, where does the snow fall? Because right now it's a narrow rain/snow line that could be the difference in a few inches and nothing but rain.

Just about everyone may start as rain early tomorrow afternoon, before a rain/snow line will setup around 5pm in our I-71 corridor we always see as a line:

As of now this is where I feel like the freezing line might set up. Areas just south of this line may still see wet snow, but it may not stick for the first few hours. This line would sit here in to the overnight, before we go to all snow to the south and everything sticks.

What concerns me for snowfall sticking is that patch of dark blue in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia. We see this area staying warmer for almost every low that passes south of us. How far north does that venture during the day Monday? 

From experience, it always lingers farther north and for a longer time than most models ever suggest. That means for now I'm being pessimistic on snowfall totals for our area. This is also why I'm going to wait until tomorrow to make a snowfall map. For now lets just assume Lancaster and points southeast would be 1" and smaller. Dublin and northwest could be 2" or greater. For now.

I'll post with more granular totals tomorrow!