Category: Canadian Model

Feb 13

Valentine’s Day Snow

Fri.

Sat.

Sun.

Mon.

Tue.

Wed.

Thr.

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19/ 27

6/ 26

14/ 30

23/ 40

22/ 43

32/ 50

38/ 62 

2-5″

1″

0.00”

0.40″

0.00″

0.00″

0.50″

Forecast Updated 02.14.14 @ 11:00a

Accumulating Valentine’s Day Snow…The Canadian led the charge and other modeling has followed suit.  The region will deal with accumulating snow Valentines Day as low pressure moves southeast out of Missouri into the Tennessee Valley.  We think snow will fall at a good clip, periodically heavy, and begin around mid morning around the city.  In fact, a strip of 2-5″ of snow is likely to be laid down between Indianapolis and Louisville later today.  Latest radar trends from upstream and banding features suggest snowfall amounts may reach 6″ along the I-70 corridor. Needless to say, if you have travel plans this afternoon plan for snow covered roads and slick travel.

A fresh shot of arctic air will drill south into the region tonight and result in Saturday “wake up” temperatures in the single digits with a biting northwest wind.

Another Fast Moving Clipper…After a mostly dry Saturday, we forecast light snow to build back into the region Saturday night into early Sunday.  This will only be a light snow event and most amounts will be in the dusting to 1″ category.  The sun should quickly return Sunday afternoon, though it’ll remain colder than normal.

Foggy Start To The Week…As a southerly air flow transports milder air north and over the snow pack across central Indiana fog will develop.  It’s possible some freezing drizzle is dealt with Monday morning before temperatures rise above freezing.  Prepare for a downright gloomy start to the work week.  A cold front will push through the region Monday evening and lead to a period of showers, potentially transitioning to light snow or a light wintry mix Monday night as cold air sweeps back in.

A Spring Tease…A spring tease will have many Hoosiers wanting to break out the shorts by the mid week period.  In fact, highs will zoom into the 60s Thursday, courtesy of a strong and gusty southwest breeze.  The downside?  A line of showers and gusty thunderstorms later in the day.  While we still have a week to monitor this situation, the possibility is there for a few storms to reach severe levels across the Ohio Valley region.  Stay tuned as we monitor this developing weather situation.

Looking longer term, we anticipate the briefly milder spring “tease” to be just that.  Signals are increasingly favorable for a prolonged period of cold, wintry conditions building back into the region as we put a wrap on February and head into March.

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Permanent link to this article: https://indywx.com/valentines-day-snow/

Feb 13

Snowy Friday On Tap (For Some)…

This will be quick this morning, due to time, but we’ll have your complete 7-Day forecast posted tonight. We’re continuing to monitor the weather situation Friday.  The Canadian has led…

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Permanent link to this article: https://indywx.com/snowy-friday-on-tap-for-some/

Feb 11

“O Canada…”

A developing weather situation warrants our attention tonight and that’s the potential of a snow event Valentine’s Day.  The Canadian has led the way with this system and other forecast model data is beginning to follow it’s lead, slowly, but surely :-).

While we have time to continue to fine tune things, the trend is certainly one for the snowier over the past 12 hours.  That’s not saying we have complete agreement amongst all forecast models, but the overall pattern is one that has to at least raise an eye brow for accumulating snow potential across central Indiana Friday.

A clipper system will dive southeast out of Canada and into the Dakotas Thursday.  It’ll race southeast through the Plains states and into Missouri as early as Friday before tracking into the lower Ohio and Tennessee Valleys’ Saturday morning.  Clipper systems can always be challenging to track, but especially during the late winter and spring months.  The combination of lingering winter chill and the resurgent spring warmth can turn what may seem like a “harmless” wet snow event into a full-blown snow storm with little warning if one’s not paying attention.  That’s not saying this is the case with this particular event, but it is saying we have a close eye on things.  This will come on the front end of a brief, but significant, pattern change that will promote warmer than normal conditions across the region next week.  The tight thermal gradient can essentially help fuel this system as it moves southeast (whether or not this makes “the turn” and adds to the snow pack along the East Coast is yet to be seen).  Temperatures Saturday may approach 50 degrees across southwest Missouri Friday while here, across the “snow fields” of central Indiana, we remain locked in the 20s.

For now we’ll refrain from hoisting snowfall potential, but suggest you keep a close eye on the Friday and Saturday forecast and plan for the likelihood of at least some accumulation.  Stay tuned.

Clipper21414

Permanent link to this article: https://indywx.com/o-canada/

Feb 10

Watching The Pattern Turn Active Yet Again…

After a dry period through early to mid week, our weather pattern will begin to turn active yet again as we head into late week and this weekend.  Three of our more trusted mid range computer models handle the individual impulses of energy differently and the snow potential ranges anywhere from nothing more than 1″ to as much as 10″ in the Friday-Tuesday period.  Most likely, we’re looking at something somewhere in the middle.

Our first chance of accumulating snow arrives Friday.  Both the European forecast model and Canadian forecast model agree on this, while the latest GFS takes the same energy through the Great Lakes, missing our region entirely.  We feel the GFS may be in error mode here.  While it’s possible the GFS may lead the way (anything is possible this far off), we feel the EC and Canadian have a better handle on things and we’ve based our forecast (post below) off a blend of these two models for Friday, including accumulating snow.

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Our next shot of accumulating snow blows in Saturday.  All three models agree on this, but handle the track of the low, another clipper system, differently.  The Canadian tracks the low south of IND, strengthens it on it’s journey east and results in a full blown snow storm here Saturday.  The GFS and EC remain weaker and track the low across central or northern parts of the state, with much lighter snow amounts here.

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You can find your completed 7-Day forecast in the post below this one.  Finally, there are some signs the pattern may begin to relax and allow a milder brand of air into the region around the 20th.  We caution though that this won’t be a “suddenly it’s spring” pattern, but rather a tease of sorts as longer term signals suggest a wintry regime returns late February into March…

Permanent link to this article: https://indywx.com/watching-the-pattern-turn-active-yet-again/

Feb 02

More Thoughts On Our Next Winter Storm…

As we continue to draw ever closer to our next significant winter storm, we wanted to provide some of our latest thoughts.  This isn’t a post that will hash out snowfall accumulation ideas or precipitation types, but instead will provide details on our expected track and potential liquid equivalent precipitation amounts.  With so much hype and hoopla around this storm for the past couple weeks, lets just sit back and look at the “bigger” picture, as opposed to trying to sort out details that, quite frankly, are still too early to lay out with any certainty as I write this late Friday night

Here’s our (IndyWx.com) expected track of the low Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon.  We used a blend of the GFS, European, and Canadian operational model data, as well as the GFS and European ensemble data sets.  We think surface low pressure tracks out of northeastern Mississippi (Tuesday evening) through north-central Kentucky (Wednesday morning), and into Pennsylvania (Wednesday night) before a secondary low forms off the northeast coastline.

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This is an ideal track for a winter storm across central Indiana, but specifics such as strength and depth of the cold air, potential southern convection, and forward motion of the storm will have to be sorted out over the next day, or so.  Early indications are that while this storm will take a “good” track for winter weather lovers here across central Indiana, the speed in which the system will be moving may reduce snow and ice accumulations from what they otherwise could be.  That said…early raw numbers suggest .50″ to .80″ amounts (liquid equivalent) could fall in the Tuesday-Wednesday time frame which is significant.  Case in point, a standard 10:1 ratio that would suggest 5 to 8 inches of snow- assuming the form of precipitation fell as snow through the entire duration.  Again, that is far from a certainty at this point.

Ignoring items such as model snowfall forecasts and precipitation types, just looking at the expected track would suggest central Indiana is very much in the game for a potentially significant and disruptive winter storm Tuesday into Wednesday.  We’ll have to fine tune precise amounts and precipitation types in the next day or two.  Additionally, much colder air (below zero once again at night) may blow into the state behind this storm for mid and late week before we gear up for yet another winter weather maker heading into next weekend.  We still have a long way to go in this pattern…

Permanent link to this article: https://indywx.com/more-thoughts-on-our-next-winter-storm/