Chilly Weather Before Our Weekend Wintry Threat

Good morning, folks! ITS FRIDAY! I hope everyone has had a great week. The upcoming pattern is active and wild, as we’re looking at chilly weather before our weekend wintry threat. Buckle up!

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Chilly and Gloomy Friday

Well, even though it is Friday, the weather is certainly nothing to write home about.

While many eyes will be on this weekend’s weather system, don’t completely sleep on how Friday’s weather can impact you. It may be so boring, that it makes you want to stay home all day.

We’re expecting mostly cloudy skies across the region as larger scale moisture returns from the Pacific ahead of the next weather maker. Lower level clouds may break up by the afternoon, but look to be replaced by high clouds.

As a result, we’re only expecting highs to rise out of the mid 30s this morning into the lower 40s this afternoon.

Yeah, I told you it is boring. Especially compared to Saturday and Sunday’s forecast…

This Weekend’s Forecast is a Major Headache

Look, I have been doing this for a decent bit. This is one of the tougher forecasts that I have seen in a while. There remains significant uncertainty in the forecast.

So, let me break this down into some simple terms:

• A surface low is expected to develop along the Gulf Coast near the Texas Louisiana border by late Friday night.
• Copious precipitation is expected to develop in association with this system in response to strong mid and upper level forcing.
• This low will track along the Gulf Coast Saturday and should emerge off the coast of the Carolinas by Sunday morning.
• We are on the northern side of this, and thus, we are looking at a threat for wintry weather on Saturday night and into Sunday.
• Models are all over the place right now with this, but a clear trend has developed recently indicating a southward trend with the precipitation extent, and thus lowering our chances of significant accumulations.

This is not an easy forecast. When you wake up on Saturday, don’t expect precipitation. Clouds will have moved into the region, and will be hanging tough as precip inches northward.

As a result, highs will only be held into the mid 30s. Air across the region will be relatively dry, with dewpoints only in the mid 20s. This will be key as this dry air may “eat up” some of the precip that we could see.

Saturday night is when stuff begins getting difficult. The models are pretty much all over the place, but I am going to largely follow trends. None of the models really bring high totals of precipitation northward, limiting our potential for a major event.

The models that do bring it northward don’t keep the precipitation around long, and have been trending toward a drier solution away from our region.

So what does this mean? Well, the odds of a significant event causing havoc to your weekend are decreasing, and maybe quickly. I still anticipate seeing a period of wintry mix and snow late Saturday night and Sunday, but nothing too crazy.

In addition to question marks on precipitation extent, temperature profiles look very iffy at best, leading to a mix bag of precip types. It would likely start off as rain, change over to a period of sleet or snow afterwards.

Ultimately (at this time), I don’t expect this to be a significant event for our region.

Clouds and showers/snow showers look to hang tough around the region Sunday and Monday, as temps don’t get out of the low and mid 30s.

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Well, that is all I have! Be sure to follow @wxornotBG on Twitter and Facebook for the latest information on this weekend’s wintry threat! Have a great Friday!