Client Brief: Wet Snow Develops This Afternoon Into The Evening…

Type: Impactful Winter Weather

What: Accumulating wet snow

When: This afternoon into early evening 

Temperatures: Falling from the upper 30s early afternoon to around 30° by late evening.

Wind: North 20-25 MPH

Blowing/ Drifting: Non-existent to minimal

Pavement Impacts: Salting required. Plowing will also likely be needed across east-central Indiana.

There’s an old saying in the weather business of an “upper low being a weatherman’s foe.” That’s particularly true early and late in the season due to the added complexities of marginally cold air typically available. As we discussed over the past week, the dynamics and cold air these type of systems can manufacture also creates added headache. Many instances these kind of systems result in essentially a “now cast” scenario. With all of that said, our confidence is increasing after another look at overnight model runs to put out the snowfall forecast above. Rain will overspread central Indiana late morning into the early afternoon, however, as the precipitation rates increase, we’ll notice a transition to wet snow this afternoon into the evening. There could also be a brief wintry mix, including sleet, during the transition to wet snow. Banding features will likely develop late afternoon into early evening leading to heavier snowfall across east-central parts of the state where we have the 1″ to 3″ snowfall forecast up. For the remainder of central Indiana, most should be closer to a coating with a few 1″ reports. The snow will exit even far eastern areas before midnight.

Confidence: Medium

Next Update: This afternoon

Evening Update On Thursday Rain; Weekend Mischief…

Quick update this evening just to touch base on the afternoon/ evening model data.

We’re still anticipating a dry Wednesday, but caution that conditions will be ripe overnight to result in areas of dense fog Wednesday morning. It’ll be wise to allow extra time to work and school in the morning just to be safe.

As we look ahead, rain will return to the region Thursday as an area of low pressure lifts into the Great Lakes region. This will drag a cold front through our region Thursday night into Friday morning. Looking at the most updated high resolution data suggests the steadiest rain will arrive around or just after lunchtime Thursday.

With that said, rainfall amounts aren’t anticipated to be significant. Most will be between 0.10” and 0.25” with a few heavier totals.

After a quiet Friday, moisture will overspread the region once again this weekend. This is the “follower” system modeling has struggled with over the past week. We were confident this would be a local player due to the overall upper level pattern, despite the inconsistent modeling. Sure enough, the consensus of modeling this evening brings in another system in the Saturday-Sunday time frame. With marginally cold air, this isn’t expected to be a widespread winter weather maker, but we continue to closely monitor the potential of localized “more meaningful” wintry precipitation across portions of the central and northern Ohio Valley. Note the wide range of possibilities individual GFS ensemble members print off:

We’ll continue to keep close tabs on things the next couple days and have a fresh update posted early tomorrow morning reviewing the latest overnight data. Specifics should become much more clear with regard to the weekend system once we get to Thursday…