Wintry Weather Possible Saturday Night

Real-time Bowling Green Weather Radar

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The Wintry Weather Threat

This won’t really be a forecast discussion, but it kinda will be. I’ll be discussing the chances of wintry weather on Saturday night, but I will keep it pretty short, sweet and straightforward.

First of all, at this time, this event does not look to be significant. It does have the potential to be impactful, though, and that is the real issue. With many traveling this weekend and next week, our priority is to inform you all on threats that could impact those travels.

The basic set up includes a large shortwave trough that will dig into the southwestern United States by Friday afternoon and evening. This will eject into the Four Corners region, and then move towards our region by Saturday afternoon and evening.

In response to this, a surface low will begin to develop across the central and northern Plains, and will extend its warm front into the region by Friday afternoon. As meteorologist Jacob Wilkins discussed this morning, this warm front will usher in the beginning of a very quick and brief warm up Friday afternoon and Saturday.

The length and extent of this warm up is pretty cloudy (no pun intended) right now. The models haven’t converged on the cold front timing Saturday, and as a result, it is difficult to pin down just how warm it will get Saturday, and when the temps will come crashing down. This is a key part of this forecast. The quicker the change over, the better the opportunity we’ll have to see wintry weather of some impact.

At this time, I think the cold front is most likely to move through the region between 3 pm and 7 pm on Saturday. This will be a very sharp and noticeable cold front, as well. There will likely be some gusty winds associated with it, as well as rainfall. Temperatures may fall from the mid 60s all the way down to the low 30s within a matter of 1 to 2 hours.

This sort of sets up well for a nice, quick change over from rain to light snow as the cold air filters in after the front. The precipitation is forecast to move out pretty quickly as a colder and drier airmass moves in from the northwest. There have been model runs, however, that showed a new low pressure forming in central Alabama and moving into northern Georgia on Saturday night into Sunday morning.

This would give a shot at some extended wintry weather if everything went correctly, and thus, an impactful event. Recent model runs have backed off that idea though.

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So, what does this mean?

Well, that is a great question! I want to make one thing certain: this isn’t a settled forecast, and won’t be settled until the Friday timeframe. The models are having a difficult time with this system. One of the main models has sped this system up 6 hours and slowed it back 6 hours in a matter of four model runs.

This is a tough forecast to make this far out, mainly because:

1. The system is still over the Pacific Ocean
2. The degree of warming on Friday/Saturday isn’t yet nailed down
3. The cold front timing is wobbly
4. The degree to which a low is able to form to our south on Saturday night isn’t yet know

These four factors will play a huge role in what happens on Saturday night and Sunday morning. There are a few scenarios that happen.

• A) The front could move through so quickly that the cold air doesn’t catch the precipitation, and we see no wintry weather at all
• B) The cold air won’t be as cold as advertised, and we don’t see wintry weather on the back edge because it doesn’t get cold enough quick enough
• C) The cold air and frontal precipitation align perfectly, and we see 45 minutes to an hour of snowfall on Saturday night
• D) Any of the first three happen, but a low pressure system forms to out south and creates additional precipitation Saturday night and Sunday to give light accumulations of snowfall

If I were to rank the above by likelihood to occur, I would go (with 1 having the best chance to occur):

1. Scenario C
2. Scenario A
3. Scenario D
4. Scenario B

I rank letter B at the bottom solely because I think this airmass behind the front is gonna be cold. The biggest point to come out of this with is that this is more than likely not going to be a significant event. A lot will have to change over the next few days for me to change my thoughts on that. And things can change! But this is what the event is looking like right now.

As always, stay tuned to WxOrNotBG! This is a pretty wild pattern that we are in, so it wouldn’t surprise me if a portion of this forecast changes by Saturday. Be sure to follow @WxOrNotBG on Twitter to get the latest consistently! Thanks for reading, and have a great evening, folks!