Good Saturday evening to everyone we continue to monitor an active weather weekend across the region.
It all begins tonight with a chance of thunderstorms and potential severe weather. However winter is bound and determined to make a return as soon as tomorrow as another disturbance, low pressure and much colder air filters into the Carolinas.
Synoptics…
The cold front responsible for the severe weather will be located across the Central and Eastern Carolinas by Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile intensifying upper disturbance and developing low pressure down along the Savannah River Valley will work in tandem to bring more precipitation into the region Sunday night before exiting late Sunday night.
The storm track in the upper levels quite honestly would be a very favorable signal for significant winter weather across a large part of North Carolina. However as you are aware the Southeast US has been in the midst of an impressive run of abnormally warm weather for the winter months. So in layman‘s terms the recent warm weather is ruining what would be a near perfect set up for winter storm across the foothills and Western Piedmont.
Across the mountains it’s a slightly different story as the high terrain favors colder weather obviously and with this energy coming across tomorrow night rain showers early in the evening will quickly change to snow and the snow levels will drop to the populated valleys across the High Country and possibly for those in the French Broad River Valley before precipitation ends. There will be some very strong lift with this system as you can see on the video loop below. Moisture will be heavy for a period of about six hours or so as everything progresses east late tomorrow night.
700mb relative humidity
So ultimately, will areas east of the mountains see any snowfall from this?
Right now we see the opportunity of that being very limited at this time. Will continue to keep an eye on the guidance overnight tonight to see if there are any changes.
The image below is a first guess on what we think could happen. More in terms of the probability of seeing a snowflake fall from the sky.
Confidence is high right now of there being no accumulation east of the mountains. The best chance of seeing a snowflake fall? It would lie along and north of Interstate 40 between approximately 1 AM to 5 AM on Monday morning. Temperatures will be several degrees above freezing as well. Therefore we see no travel impacts…
