It feels like every single storm lately has either had sleet, freezing rain, or a change to rain that messes everything up. Here we go again tonight in to tomorrow morning with an extremely hard to pin down storm that'll hit at an awful time for travel. This time it's snow to rain, instead of the rain to snow we've already seen a couple times this winter.
This is a pretty strong system, pulling a lot of moisture from the south. If this were any further east, we would be in a mainly rain scenario, but without a ton of push from the warm sector to start, we're going to get a nice thump of snow in the beginning:
This will probably be one of the hardest storms of the season to forecast. It's going to snow, it's going to rain, but the rest could be argued. How long will it snow? How much will the rain actually melt the existing snow? Do we have a mixed/sleet event in the transition zone? Will we ever get a regular snow storm again?
So many questions.
I'll do the best to time it and give my best guess at accumulation:
TIMING
Expect light to moderate snow to start in Pickaway County by 11pm and make it to Delaware County by 1am. This is a pretty quick moving system, but precip rates should be higher than normal, meaning we have a chance at accumulating quickly.
Around 4am, expect a sleet/mix to hit Pickaway and extreme Southern Fairfield Counties. These southern extremes are the most likely areas where this mix will occur. Warm air will mix in enough the further north this storm progresses that areas along and north of I-70 will most likely see a straight snow to rain changeover.
By 6am, expect a rain/snow line right on the I-70 corridor, with rain south and snow north. This is where things could get interesting. The hour or so preceding the changeover should be when we get some of our heaviest snow. Some models suggest that progressing line kind of stalls over the I-70 area for a couple hours, right around rush hour. Couldn't really pick worse timing for this. If this transpires, it won't stall for long, and we should be all rain in Central Ohio by 9am at the latest.
RAIN IMPACTS
This will be twofold. First, I don't think temps will rise much at all during the day Wednesday. So yes, we'll changeover to all rain by mid morning, but this isn't like a sudden jump to 50° where we have no trace of snow by noon. I think the snow that falls will be a wet, heavy snow. Maybe like an 8:1 ratio, way wetter than we're used to so far this winter. So since this snow will already be a very wet snow, adding rain should make this a slushy mess by mid morning.
Then we're going to see a couple waves of moderate to heavy rain throughout the day, combined with a snow pack, should lead to a lot of runoff. The WPC and NWS aren't really overly concerned about flooding, but there's definitely going to be ponding everywhere.
SNOW AMOUNTS
So lets get to the details. How much will fall? Boy, it's going to be hard to pin down. It's going to really depend on how quick of a change over we see, where the heaviest banding sets up, and yes, exactly how low those water/snow ratios are. I hinted yesterday on Twitter that I feel like warm air always wins out in these situations, and I can't find a reason to back down from that. I think we have a change over to rain quicker than most models suggest, and the huge totals the NAM suggests are way over blown:
IMPACTS
Huge. Yes, I know it's only a little bit of snow, but having this hit right before the morning rush starts will cause dozens of accidents, school delays and a huge headache.
Take it slow tomorrow and maybe just stay home until the rain starts! It's just a little snow.
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