Geek Weather

Welcome to “Geek Weather.”  The purpose of this blog is to give an inside look at the thoughts, ponderings, musings, intuition and frustrations that go into forecasting our local weather.  I’ll be mostly writing about the future.  No one knows, for certain, what the future will be, so sometimes the ideas given here may prove quite embarrassing to me.  I’m hopeful, however, that won’t be the case too often!  With the above in mind, the operating principle behind this blog will be…”If this doesn’t work, I’ll call it Version 1.0.”

Midday Tuesday…

Some thoughts on the possible snow later this week.  As usual the primary U.S. forecast models are not in agreement of the evolution of the system now sitting off the southern California coast.

Model trends:

a). Yesterday’s runs were, in general, pointing toward 2”-4” of snow for our area.  Late yesterday, they started hinting at a slowing and northward shift in the eventual pattern (pretty common for the models). The slowing allows more time for warmer air to arrive and the northward trend allows it to get farther north.

b).  Last night the northward (and warmer) trend increased.  That introduced the possibility that our 2”-4” snow could end up as a “snow changing to rain” pattern.  Basically a sloppy mess. 

c).  This morning, the model runs have switched “colder” so that shifts the odds back to an “all snow” pattern.  But, not to 2”-4”.  Something else has popped up – both models area adding  much more rain (and thunderstorms) along the Gulf Coast.  This new wrinkle spells trouble for snow-lovers.  An outbreak of thunderstorms to our south almost always cuts off the transport of moisture northward.  Thus, systems which look like good rain or snow-makers end up starved for moisture.

Current status:  Looks like we’ll see the situation spread out into two (potential) snow-producers.  First one should be Thursday morning with the second impulse coming through Thursday night/early Friday.  Each one looks like it could give us an inch or so of snow.  However, a good bit of the first one will melt before the second one arrives.

So, my present idea is for 1”-2” of snow, mostly on grassy areas.  I’d lean more to the one inch, for now.

Comments

[Jo Nall]

It's good to read your geek discussion. As a retired military weather forecaster and a geek, also, I enjoy looking at charts, sat pix and the like. I combine your prog discussion with the charts in looking at our local (Cincinnatti) weather. Jo Nall

[Lisa]

Well, it was a "10" over here in Indiana! New Albany/Floyd county had their first snow day and we had our first snow! Whoopee!!!! I love the winter, and I love the snow. Plus, it helps to kill all the bad germs and freezes allergens, which is a welcome relief in the Ohio valley. Yay snow!

[employees]

Tom, how can you rate today (Feb 1st) as a "10"?!?
There is not enough snow to play in AND Jeff Co Schools are not out. Today can not be higher than an "8". :-)

[adam]

hey tom it feels weird typing in tom for once cause im used to belski's blog but i think we have a good shot of seeing 6 inches in places south of louisville such as e-town leitchfield and so so forth but louisville will probaly get like 4.7 inches or so maybe even more if the system stengthens a little dont want it to go farther north then it will be rain here :( so our only hope is for it to strenthen and maybe get A Batch of like .50 on the gfs models like it shows right now which would be awsome 5 inches :) tell me what yyou think