Slushy Mess for Wednesday

It's been so long that I can't remember the last time we had a winter storm that didn't bring some kind of mixed bag of precipitation. Did we have one a few weeks ago? Maybe early January? I feel like there was one in there somewhere. Probably the overachieving Clipper, right?

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.

A Mixed Bag on Sunday

I just wanted to quickly post something about our low impact event coming in tomorrow. As of now I don't think we're in for anything dangerous for our area, and with it happening on a low travel day like Sunday, we hopefully shouldn't have much trouble on the roads.

Early morning is when we should expect freezing rain to start. It's the most likely period for any real impacts, although even that should be limited to ice on raised surfaces and maybe sidewalks:

Models show returns getting heavier in the afternoon, but I personally feel that by this point in the day we could even switch over to all rain:

A little movement north or south on this storm could obviously affect us, but at this point it seems like we're right back to the normal I-70 split for us.

Our next chance for snow comes Wednesday night in to Thursday, and at this point that storm appears very hard to pin down. Lots of different solutions, all depending on how strong the storm develops. I'll definitely be posting about that in the coming days.

UPDATE: Snowy Sunday

Just a couple hours before nightfall and we're looking at about an inch or more for most of Central Ohio. The assumption with yesterday's post wasn't that it wouldn't snow... but that it would be low impact since this would change to rain by tomorrow.

The impact today is productive snowfall sticking to cold surfaces. Even with the light snow we have, there are already some snow emergencies for the area:

Snow will continue through 8pm for most of the area. That could accumulate up to 2" for most areas. I think impact would be minimal by the morning commute as we would have all night to clear the roads. The problem will be precip returning from the south shortly before sunrise. Our biggest issue will be temperatures. We will be right on the boarder of freezing, meaning it'll be a hard forecast for rush hour. We could see snow, sleet, freezing rain or just plain rain. It'll be very hard to tell:

So what happens? I've illustrated 33 degrees on top of the HRRR radar simulation. That'll put us really close for a precip type. We could be above freezing above the surface, but just below on roadways. So I think we could see some icy conditions first thing tomorrow.

If this plays out, expect some school delays in the morning, and a tricky commute.

By 10am temperatures should jump and leave us with all rain. At that point we go from a tricky commute to a rainy 36 straight hours. 

Lastly, we could have another hit of snow Tuesday night. I didn't call for this yesterday as I thought moisture would move out before cold could wrap in, and I assumed warm air would return too quick. The NAM doesn't think so:

A Drenched February

I've been watching the slight possibility of us getting some accumulating snow on Sunday, but in the end it trended warmer, just like everything in the month of February it seems. We went from the last week of January being brutally cold, to the first week of February being above average in warmth and rain.

This is what we're in for probably for the foreseeable future.

First, this Sunday, we could see some flakes fly at times, but don't bank on it being an impactful snow at all. By mid morning we could see some snow, with the slight possibility of more in the evening, but as of now it looks like we might actually get dry slotted:

Even if we got some snow, it would be gone by Monday as the second part of this storm rides up the boundary and drenches us in 1-2" of rain.

This will be a drawn out storm that'll hit Sunday and stay through Tuesday. We'll see multiple types of weather; snow, rain and then more high winds. This storm will have a deep pressure gradient, bringing what will probably be our 281st high wind advisory of the year:

Usually after a strong storm system like this we would see a huge cool down on the backside, but we never really get that this time. Shortly after the low passes, high pressure builds over the Southeastern US and the southern flow comes right back.

So for this week, expect rain. Lots of rain, again, and the return of flooding. We still have very high river levels and localized low spot flooding still hasn't fully subsided. But we're right back to the rainy stuff with little chance to recover.

We have to look to next weekend for our next chance at snow. Again, this is way too far out to fully address, but know that I'll be keeping an eye on what happens once that southerly flow returns late  in the week. Models hint at a southern low that could either bring us more rain, or slide just a little east and bring us a text book App Runner.

Don't get your hopes up just yet, but in a pattern like this we have to look forward to anything that might bring us any hope of snow.

A Winter Wasteland

Remember all the snow we woke up to Friday morning? Well here we are Sunday evening and it has been nuked. Goodbye snow. Goodbye anything resembling winter. It's all going to melt away as we give way to rain and and warm temperatures.

Friday's overachieving storm dropped a solid 5-6" across much of Central Ohio, with some 4" totals in southern Pickaway and Fairfield Counties. That left us with our highest snow depth of the season after our biggest snow of the season. This is right after many hours of below zero temps. A normal clipper would have dropped 2-3", but snow ratios jumped to 20:1 and dumped on our area.

Now we only have a slight chance of getting below freezing at all this week; Tuesday night on the backside of a weak cold front. We're looking at multiple rounds of rain over the next 5 days, leading to a mud pit for the Ohio Valley.

The WPC is forecasting a swath of 4-5" of rain for the next 5 days:

We could have a pattern switch back for a brief time next weekend, but for now prepare for an early monsoon. This winter has been bipolar.