Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley
Good Wednesday morning,
Today and the next few days are going be quite spring-like across the region but massive changes are on the way for this weekend as winter weather may impact parts of Western North Carolina.
A frontal boundary will remain active as it stalls to our east on Friday. Showers may be hard to push out of the Carolinas as additional upper level energy moves in from the west.
There has been a significant change in the computer model guidance for this weekend as it appears a strong upper low will form in the Lower Mississippi River Valley and move across the Southeast.
Since it’s still the heart of winter, any upper low of this nature has to be monitored for the possibility of non-liquid precipitation. The European and GFS models are coming into agreement that just enough cold air aloft will be available for snow to break out on its northwest edge.
At this time confidence is growing that a winter weather event may occur across the mountains but the setup is definitely in place for some locations East of the Blue Ridge to see their first bonafide snowflakes of the winter season.
Probabilities of seeing 1 inch of snow are over 60 percent in the mountains per this mornings model ensembles and the 30 percentile is slowly working its way into Interstate 40 in the Northern Foothills.
Winter Storm Index has been placed at Level 1.
