Highlights:
- Wet at times to close the week
- Rain ends as a bit of snow Friday
- Light snow potential on Christmas Eve
Milder Than Normal, But Damp At Times…A storm system will deliver periods of light rain to central Indiana today into the wee morning hours Friday. Steadiest rain will fall to our east, but we will notice greater overall coverage of rain this evening into the overnight period. As colder air wraps in here late tonight and Friday morning, precipitation will end as light snow (no accumulation is expected).
The weekend will feature quiet conditions and our attention will shift to the potential for a weak weather system to scoot through here on Christmas Eve. With just enough cold air in place, precipitation would likely fall as light snow. Again, this isn’t expected to be a big deal, but we’ll remain hopeful for a “touch” of snow as Santa gets set for his big night.
Dry conditions return on Christmas Day and temperatures will begin to moderate ahead of a big wet storm system that will arrive the middle of next week.
Highlights:
The basis of our late-December forecast is built from the MJO, or Madden-Julian Oscillation. We note the MJO is expected to rumble through Phase 4 before heading into Phase 5 around Christmas. Phase 4 (image 2 below) is a warm phase and correlates well to what the week ahead will provide. However, Phase 5 (image 3 below) is a colder phase and could “up the ante” for the potential of wintry weather around Christmas.
If the MJO amplitude remains, it’ll roll into Phase 6 to close the month and open January. Here’s how that would correlate in the temperature department:
The upcoming week will run milder than normal- lining up perfectly with MJO Phase 4.
The first of our targeted holiday storm systems will come at the tail end of the warm Phase 4 and will likely deliver a wind-whipped rain in here as early as Wednesday night and Thursday morning. However, as the storm pulls northeast along the Ohio River, it’ll deepen on its journey into the eastern Great Lakes region. This will help pull colder air into the region, likely resulting in rain transitioning to snow Friday. Given the path of the storm, this doesn’t favor some sort of prolonged backlash snow event, but it could be enough to result in accumulating snow across eastern Ohio Valley sections and downwind of the snow belt regions of northern IN, OH, and MI.
The pattern, as a whole, appears to be one of transition to close the month and open January and it’s not really until we get to mid-January where we think all of the drivers “align” to create more of a lock and hold cold pattern. With that said, a stormy late December pattern can present problems, even in the midst of relatively mild times. We’ll be here to dissect the storms as they come throughout the holiday season…