By: Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley
Good Monday evening to everyone, Meteorological winter has started and its wasting no time making the weather interesting around here. This weather update is sponsored by Wendy B’s Embroidery and Screen Printing in Morganton.
A southern stream system is quickly moving toward the region and will bring a cold, soaking rain to all of western North Carolina during the morning and early afternoon hours of Tuesday before we clear out for the mid-week. Note on the satellite imagery the cloudiness along the southern of the U.S. and back toward the Eastern Pacific…looks very Neutral to El Nino-ish from a presentation standpoint. The MJO is also moving into Phase 8 which is also active for North America.
Moisture tonight will overrun shallow, cold air at the surface and that is going to make for some nasty weather overnight and the first half of Tuesday. There should be enough cold air in the mountain valleys and along the Blue Ridge escarpment to where freezing rain may stick to trees, patios and other elevated surfaces creating a coating of ice early tomorrow morning above 2500 – 3000 ft elevation. Rainfall amounts region-wide should range in the 0.50 – 1.25 inch range through Tuesday afternoon.
The mid-week timeframe looks to be tranquil. We should see a good amount of sunshine both days with high temperatures up in the 40’s and some lower 50’s on Thursday, which is not too far off from normal for the first week of December.
Things get a lot more interesting starting Friday as we may be dealing with a third CAD (cold-air damming) event in a seven day period. An area of surface high pressure will stretch from the Midwest over to New England by Friday morning and trying to wedge along the eastern slopes of the Appalachians. Meanwhile, another southern stream low will be trying to form over Southeast Louisiana and will direct moisture toward the re-established cold air.
Right now this looks to be a low-confidence forecast for Friday as the GFS and European models are not in agreement. A couple days ago, the GFS was showing this kind of setup, lost it and now the Euro, which was a drier solution in previous model runs is trying to become more aggressive.
Today’s 12z Euro ENS mean hints at more flirtations with winter weather on Friday across the Upper Southeast.
Interesting enough in looking at some of the fine details behind the 12z Euro ENS run indicates the Friday system could possibly allowing winter precip to expand beyond the favored escapment region and down into some lower elevations along/north of I-40. Of the 50 different Euro ENS members, about 60-70 percent of them shows a trace or more of snow/ice in Hickory on Friday. That’s the first time we have seen hints of winter weather in the lower elevations with this current pattern.
Right now it seems to be a solid bet that Friday is going to be another cold, cloudy day across the region…but could it be more than that? We shall see…stay tuned!