Chris's Corner - Record for Latest First Flakes May Fall

No biggie. Just thought it was strange. I'm also usually posting from mobile while using Chrome and I have never seen that problem.

00z Ukmet has a 974 mb low on top of STL Friday night.

So, need that to come southeast a bit.

Certainly looking like a Midwest blizzard is brewing though.

00z GEFS looks great though.

What’s the North American non tropical low pressure record?

There’s a handful of GEFS members that have pressures near 950mb in the Ottawa Canada area

Most of you probably don't need to read my long social media forecast... but if you want to....

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***POTENT STORM SYSTEM ON TRACK TO AFFECT THE REGION MONDAY AND TUESDAY***
Good evening! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. Now that the latest observations and model guidance are in it is time for an update on the upcoming potent winter storm. Again, potent does not = heavy snow for everyone… and it bears repeating that most in our viewing area will NOT see heavy snow from this system. That said, there will be some impacts from rain, wind, and some snow Monday afternoon through Tuesday night. It has been an interesting storm to track thus far as expected.

So what has changed…
1) The timing… precipitation development is looking faster and that means precipitation will spread across the region late Monday afternoon….starting in our western counties between noon and 2pm… and reaching the metro STL area and the Mississippi River between 3pm and 5pm….crossing into southern Illinois between 5pm and 7pm. Steady precipitation is likely through Monday evening… but diminish to very light precipitation around midnight.
What has not changed…

The overall look of the storm remains the same, outside of the faster arrival Monday. We can break the storm down into three different periods of time.
1) Late Monday afternoon into Monday evening up through around midnight. This will be the period of most substantial precipitation. Look for rain and snow to spread from west to east across the region. Areas north of I-44 in Missouri and north of I-70 in Illinois will see rain mix with or change to wet snow for a few hours as the precipitation arrives. This area includes metro STL… but especially the northern and western suburbs…more so than the southern and eastern suburbs. Where a change to all snow occurs… it may come down at a moderate pace for short duration resulting in some light accumulations. Where the precipitation will remain snow the longest… up in Montgomery, Lincoln and Pike Counties… several inches of snow will be possible. Further south, snow will not last long with a transition to all rain likely between 9pm and midnight as warmer air spreads in at cloud level from the south. This transition to all rain will eventually make it up to a line from near Bowling Green over to Girard, IL (just south of Springfield, IL) by late evening. For areas southeast of I-44 in Missouri and south of I-70 in Illinois… this period will bring all rain. A soaking rain at that with 0.5 to nearly 1 inch expected of rainfall.

2) Late Monday night through the Tuesday AM Rush up through Midday Tuesday…
This will be a period of relative calm across the viewing area with modestly gusty winds and scattered drizzle or brief rain showers. I do not expect much, if any wintery precipitation in our viewing area through this time.

3) Tuesday afternoon into Tuesday evening…
This will be the wraparound portion of the storm with increasing winds up to 40 mph at times, colder temperatures and a return to light snow and flurries. This snow may come down at decent pace again for brief spurts northwest of metro St. Louis… with lighter snow showers and flurries spreading back into the metro for the evening rush. Additional light accumulations are possible down to I-44 in Missouri and I-70 in Illinois… including metro St. Louis… before the wraparound portion of the storm lifts away to the east.

So… what about that elusive question of accumulation… “how much in my backyard?” As always, that depends on where you live. Weather forecasts can understandably not be a “one-size-fits-all” kind of thing. There will be wide variations in snow totals over a very, very short distance which means the exact southeastern cut-off of accumulating snow is likely to be off somewhere. My job is to try and nail down as close as possible to get you prepared for the possibilities and then let mother nature make her final call. That being said, I made only VERY minor adjustments to my snow forecast… mainly over the eastern Ozarks between Columbia and Rolla…tweaking both the 4-8 and 2-4 ranges ever so slightly to the north. Otherwise, I’m holding firm with the rest. I currently expect a the very least… 4 inches and on the high side 8 inches from northern Montgomery County, MO over to northwestern Greene County, IL. Just south of there… is a stripe of 2 to 4 inches from Hermann… up to Jerseyville…over to near Litchfield. Then south of there it tapers off quickly. The low-end buffer zone of “Dusting to 2” is meant to cover the very sharp cutoff on the southern end of the accumulation where totals may go from a couple of inches to nothing in the distance of a couple of miles or less.

There are still any number of things that could blow up this forecast… a further north track than I expect…but even a handful of miles will mean virtually no snow at all for some along the southern edge of the accumulation bands. A shift a few miles south may increase the accumulations a bit down towards the northern STL metro. Those will be nowcast/last minute adjustments to be made tomorrow.

So, as you can see… this is an interesting and challenging forecast… as most winter weather systems are. While it is definitely potent meteorologically speaking, it’s winter impacts on our region will be limited geographically to areas north of I-44 in Missouri and north of I-70 in Illinois. But that doesn’t make the overall storm less intense… as you’ll see with the 40 mph wind gusts expected by Tuesday afternoon and evening.

Ok… this got MUCH longer than I expected… but I wanted to explain in the greatest detail possible the three periods of this storm, so you are better informed.

Last point… yes… I know there is another system showing up on the charts for Friday/Saturday. Yes… it is interesting, and it will get my undivided attention once this first storm does it’s thing and moves off to the east. One storm at time!

Good night!

00z euro has a blizzard Friday/Saturday.

I can go to bed now

That would be the second one in a 5 days.

6z gfs has a little snow tonight in metro befor it warms

06z ICON is a bruiser for the entire area. In fact, Marissa is ground zero on that run..lol. I do have a feeling this next storm (Friday's) will take a further S track than tomorrow even if it still does end up NW of the benchmark.

I think you’ll do the best with the potential MLK day storm

NAM has dropped a bit south

Looking at the short range models it looks like they struggle with the multiple lows and picking out the dominant one.

Huge disparity between the rgem and FV3 or ARW for instance.

That's another thing that seems to have happened frequently the last several Winters. The models show an arctic blast on the way, then it gets delayed, and when it finally arrives it's nothing close to what was originally modeled.

Bit of a job north, I don't like it.

Going to be tough to benefit from antecedent arctic airmass as long as these low pressures spin up. We typically dont get right things in place until the last system comes through. I hv seen occurrances where some middle systems end up suppressed due to too much temporary push of cold air, but im thinking our best chance will be next week, if theres any moisture available. If not, we may hv to wait until things quiet down. In recent years, our best chances of snow have occurred when theres a good snowpack to our north just before that snowpack starts to recede.