If you have travel plans across central Indiana Friday and Friday night, please make sure you leave plenty of time to get to your destination and prepare for a variety of precipitation types. In fact, it’s entirely possible (depending on what time of day you’re traveling) that you have to deal with rain across south-central Indiana and snow by the time you arrive into the northern Indianapolis suburbs, complete with an icy mixture “in between.”
Digging through the weather playbook for Friday into Saturday:
A cold front is expected to move through the region Friday morning, allowing a wind shift out of the north to arrive into the city in the early to mid morning Friday. We’ll have to be in “nowcast” mode Friday to determine just exactly how far south the front makes it as this will go a long way into determining precipitation types across central Indiana.
Ultimately, a wave of low pressure will move along the front Saturday, which will help milder air push north and result in a changeover from a wintry mix to all rain during the majority of the day Saturday. In fact, there’s the chance portions of central Indiana may not have to deal with much, if any, precipitation through the majority of the day Saturday- especially south. Before that, however, we’ll have to deal with a wide variety of wintry precipitation issues Friday and Friday night… Warmer low level air will be drawn northward and overrun the colder air at the surface Friday and Friday night. What will initially be a period of snow Friday will transition to an icy mixture of sleet and freezing rain Friday night and all rain Saturday. That said, we note the milder push will be brief, and colder air will pour back into the region on gusty northwest winds Saturday night. This may result in a brief period of light snow Saturday night (not a big deal).
We think the latest high-resolution, short-term, NAM model (courtesy from the fine folks over at Weatherbell Analytics model suite) has a very good handle on accumulation ideas Friday and Saturday and is in best agreement with our analysis laid out above. This is a look at forecast snow accumulation between now and Saturday night, but we also note there will be some light sleet and freezing rain accumulation on top of any snow that falls Friday. As far as that snow goes, we think a 1-2″ band is laid down from the city and points north, increasing further as you travel into north-central and northern Indiana.
