LiveBlog: January 12th Winter Storm

8:25am
The call comes in for early dismissal of a lot of the local schools. The forecast has changed, they said, and kids need to be home earlier than expected. The reality is I think everyone's gone in to panic now because the NWS has put out their first batch of Winter Storm Warnings in 703 days. Some people forget what those are I guess?

Here's where we have them now, a few counties in Central Ohio have been added. As I advertised yesterday, they could have a little more snow than Columbus and points north and west:

NWS Wilmington is a little disjointed with their warnings in comparison to the rest of the national map, but I agree with what they've done. In the pink areas 5"+ could occur.

What's really happened this morning is the cold air is rushing in faster than some thought. That means less freezing rain, a little more snow, but actually more sleet. Sleet is junk winter precip. It's not as big of a menace as ice or snow. It's just... there. So we'll take it for travel.

The l2z weather balloon from ILN doesn't really tell us much as the cold air hasn't rushed in. What I would expect to see here in a few hours is a deeper layer of cold air for the rain to fall through, in turn creating sleet. I'll update as the freezing line approaches.

9:06am
The front passed through Canal Winchester with a 10° temperature drop in 10 minutes. Impressive.

10:20am
Temps are dropping like a rock, but luckily road surface temperatures are staying a couple degrees warmer than the air. That should give us a couple hours before ice, sleet or snow can accumulate on the roads.

12:10pm
Temperatures have actually steadied over the past hour. We're sitting around 37° with some light drizzle, sleet and snow all mixed in. With the delayed onset of snow, I think we're looking at a huge reduction in totals, unless this kicks in soon. The latest HRRR shows we may not drop below freezing until 4pm and no snow until at least 6pm. That doesn't mean we're at no snow, but some local weathermen really hyped things this morning with this early rush of cold air. I had people coming in saying they heard 6-10".

This is why you don't go model to model.

1:14pm
It never fails. It feels like every major winter storm always gets us with a dry slot that cuts down on totals. Models do a poor job of picking it up, so when it shows 6", we could get only 3" if that dry slot forms.

Sure enough...

Just like clockwork, here it is. That'll move in before the snow, and it should also reduce ice and sleet accumulations, since this is around the time frame we'd be switching over. So this could be an all snow event for us, but still not a blockbuster.

4:00pm
We've had some sleet mixing with rain off and on for the past hour or so. We're right at freezing right now, so we should start seeing some ice accumulations on trees soon. By sunset we will transition to all snow, and accumulations should come fast. Heaviest snow will be right when the changeover happens.

6:43pm
We've changed over to mostly snow now with some sleet mixed in. Areas west of I-71 have had some slushy sleet for quite a while now, so points east seemed to have missed out entirely.

This video doesn't look very impressive, but the snow is blowing with very gusty winds.

FINAL CALL: Weekend Storm

Temperatures today have been in the mid 50s to lower 60s. That's important when it comes to tomorrow's storm. Why? We have a potent low that'll be bumping up against warm air, and the clashing of air masses should help enhance this storm more than maybe some would originally think.

But will we get the 20" some people posted from computer models earlier in the week? No, absolutely not. But this should be our first real winter storm of the season. Sorry clippers, I don't count you.

Weather offices west and northeast of us have issues Winter Storm Warnings, but as of now we're just at a Winter Weather Advisory. Which means, this streak continues:

That's right, places like Jacksonville, FL have had a winter storm more recently than us. While my hopes for this storm have waned, I don't think it'll be a dud. Like I said, it'll be the first real winter storm of the season, and for most I think this will also be the biggest snow total of the season.

If you go back to my original post about this system, I pointed at a potential "ridge runner," and even though the Euro is really trying to flatten this thing out and send it east and south of us, I feel pretty confident we should have that elusive southern low storm we've missed for quite a while.

So then why don't we have Warnings? Why aren't we talking double digit snowfall totals? That's because this storm has picked up a lot of speed as it ejects out of the plains. It'll be in and out of our area a lot quicker than originally expected, meaning totals will be lower. Some models I saw earlier in the week showed a much deeper low beginning to spin backside snow as it passes to our east. Now it won't deepen until east of Buffalo, which means we won't even see a backside wrap around like a classic ridge runner would bring.

Instead, just your plain ol' change-over as cold air rushes in behind the front. That's boring.

The hard part to nail down when it comes to totals is the ice. Cold air is going to pour in under the existing warm air, allowing that change to freezing rain for a while, but how long? An hour? Three hours? Longer? I feel like the quick moving low will pull the warm air out with it pretty quick, meaning we may have a little while with moderate freezing rain before a change to huge flakes and quick snow accumulations.

This is a tough one to forecast, but here's my guess for Friday in to Saturday:

Southeast will see more snow and less ice, because that colder air will be advancing in to the area quicker down there, allowing less ice. To the northwest they're just a little too far fromthe center of the low to get the heavier precip.

I could look like a fool in 48 hours if King Euro has his way, but I just don't buy the East Coast scenario for this one. If anything, a ridge runner may bring us more than my forecasted amount as long as we don't have any more acceleration of this storm. But for now I'm playing it safe. A nice 3-5" swath across Central Ohio should do it.

UPDATE: Two Days Out - Things Are Getting Interesting

This is why uncertainty is so high up to 48 hours before this storm hits. Below is the Euro snowfall from yesterday and today, superimposed over each other:

So when a friend jokingly said, "I wish I could be as unsure about my job as meteorologists are. They're saying between 2 and 24 inches!" - I told them to shut the hell up. Kindly.

The good news is we're getting closer to this storm actually forming, which means we should get better model data coming in so we can hone in on a final solution - a solution I'm not ready to decide on yet.

Yes, models are coming back east with it, which is typical of the Euro in these southern lows. But, as TheHermit can attest to, we've seen these storms come a dozen times and they seem to turn a little further west than expected each and every time. I'm going with history on this one and betting against the I-71 corridor as being the bulls-eye. However, I'm not ready to etch that in stone yet.

Another thing to note is each model run is showing less and less snow in that sweet spot. I wouldn't let that discourage you just yet because those are in response to models thinking this track will flatten out. Remember the East Coast scenario I ruled out yesterday? At least the Euro is trying to bring that back in to play, instead of a curve up the Appalachians, it's thinking a beeline toward the DC metro area. If that were to actually happen, this storm goes from a giant, to just another wet afternoon with evening backside changeover to snow. However, I'm not buying that just yet.

I'll post tomorrow with final conclusions of what we should expect from our first decent winter storm in a while.

FIRST LOOK: Big Weekend Storm

I'm not going to hype this storm. I'm not going to post snowfall models. I purposely waited until Tuesday night to mention a Friday-Saturday storm, even though some have been talking about this storm since last Saturday. The reason?

No one knew for sure what will happen, so why talk about it?

It's ironic that on my last post TheHermitt was talking about southern lows, because that's what we have in play for the first time this season. If anyone followed me on my old blog you knew anytime I mentioned a southern low, I was talking about the ultimate make or break storm.

We could see a ton of snow. We could see a ton of ice. Or hell, we could see a lot of rain. It's hard to say 72 hours out.

Usually with a southern low we have three different scenarios. The western track, the Appalachian track, and the full miss East Coast track. I'm going to go ahead and take out the East Coast track. I think we're in play for something, so a miss is kind of out of the question.

That leaves us with two options. The western, warmer solution and the snowy Appalacian track:

If this heads west of us, it'll be a very rainy storm and very little to no snow. If it heads east we get a big snow storm. But there's a million scenarios between these two. Not black and white. Not rain OR snow.

As with every southern low, just a few miles will be the difference in the rain/snow line, if somewhere gets ice, and even where the heaviest snow will fall. If you looked at some of the model runs one thing that keeps being shown is a deformation zone with heavy snow. Probably a 50 mile wide area where we hit the jackpot. Where does it line up? Even that may be a question we can't answer until a day before it happens.

I'll post each day leading up to the storm with a more accurate idea of where this will all go down.

An Icy Monday

Since the beginning of the year we have been ice cold. We've had five days below zero, and not one has gotten warmer than 20°. That is until tonight and tomorrow.

NWS has issued a Winter Weather Advisory, mainly because of the threat of freezing rain tonight and tomorrow morning. This situation is made worse by those days of extremely cold temps leading up to tonight. Even though the environment is set up for a freezing rain event anyway, the ground is going to be very cold. We're going to see rain freeze instantly.

The latest NAM run shows precip starting around 4am Monday

This is a southern storm. I hate trying to forecast southern storms, they're just so hard to predict. But this seems like a pretty classic icing scenario to me. Warm air trying to win out over entrenched cold air almost always ends with some ice. 

The unknown is how much ice and how long it lasts, but I can bet tomorrow morning's commute will be awful. Try to stay off the roads until this thing passes.