Forecasting the December 15-16 Storm

We're about 24 hours out from the start of what will be a long duration storm for us here in Central Ohio. There have been rumblings on the internet about this storm for the past 10 days, but I've purposely kept quiet on this until now because it was just too far out to speculate on until now.

This will be our first decent "southern low" of the year, even though it's originating in the southern Plains. The track will bring it up from Texas in to the Ohio Valley by Sunday evening:

But this isn't a quick hitter. After the storm moves through by Monday early morning, a secondary low, shown in New Mexico on the map above, will intensify and head up along the quasi stationary boundary by Monday afternoon, giving us our second shot of snow.

The details are still going to be tough to nail down, so here's what we know for sure:

Sunday Night
Tomorrow will be chilly, with temps in the low 30's and slowly falling as sunset occurs. With this, a light shield of precip will move in from the south. This should be all snow for most of the overnight hours.

It seems unlikely that we'll see any major accumulations out of round 1. Perhaps a nice dusting on the grass and a couple slick spots for the morning commute on Monday.

Monday during the Day
Temps will slowly rise to the upper 30s after sunrise Monday. Any light snow will switch over to rain before our second wave of precip moves in. This is the trickiest part of the forecast, because this will also bring a surge of warm air northward. There will be so many questions about how warm, how far and how long that surge sticks around.

Monday Evening
The system begins to pull away and we switch back over to snow. As of now I don't think this is a major snow maker Monday night, but the trends bear watching for sure. We could wake up with 1-2" in parts of Central Ohio Tuesday morning if conditions are right.

I plan on writing more tomorrow as the storm gets closer and we can get a better handle on precip types for our area. Stay tuned!