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When it turned cold, it really turned cooooold. Please take this cold very seriously. This protracted cold spell could have very serious consequences for some as the effects of the cold begin to mount up chilling pipes and creating serious problems. Cold can be a killer, too, so this would be a good time to check on elderly friends or relatives to make sure their heat is working properly. Take proper care of any pets that normally stay outside. Be sure exposed pipes are wrapped and insulated. While it wastes water, you might need to let faucets drip to keep them from freezing. You can also open cabinet doors on the inside of houses to let heat get to the outside walls to keep those pipes from freezing.
The forecast for the next several days remains essentially unchanged – cold and dry! A minor disturbance moving through the flow today will bring some clouds but I think we should be mostly sunny. With those clouds and the cold air we might see a few flurries but it is nothing to get very excited about.
The long wave trough position remains situated over the East Coast of the US. While the closed low off the New England coast moves away from us, a new trough dives down the eastern side of the West Coast ridge to keep us and much of the eastern two thirds of the country in frigid conditions. This strong short wave will be the big troublemaker as our confidence in a winter weather event gains ground.
Most winter weather events in the Southeast US contain a mixture of snow and ice. Understand, please, that we are still a good five days away from this event which is likely to occur from Thursday afternoon through Friday morning. But with the cold air that is so firmly entrenched across the eastern US, it would appear that the biggest threat will be snow. I can’t rule out a small area of icing but this is much too early to try to pinpoint the area where that might occur. The 06Z GFS wrings out about 4 tenths of an inch of liquid water. The typical ratio used for snow to liquid is 10 to 1, so that means we could see on the order of 4 inches of snow. The ratio of snow to liquid is not fixed and depends on a lot of factors, but this is at least a guideline to use.
Snow events in the Southeast typically produce relatively narrow bands of snow, so it is too early to do more than speculate on amounts and location. The forecast will be refined as we get closer to the event. Based on current model data, the northern half of Alabama seems to be the main target for any snow, and as I noted just above, we could see snowfall on the order of 4 inches – and that is a substantial amount for Southeast US locations. Keep in mind that historical records for the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport show only 18 events of 3 inches of snow or more in the last 110 years.
The surface low moves out quickly on Friday creating a snow event for the Mid-Atlantic coast and New England – again. For us, however, we just drop back into the deep freeze. Should a snow event occur, we will certainly be setting the stage for single digit lows in Central Alabama. There is definitely potential for this cold event to be of historic proportion.
Looking much further afield, the GFS continues to scream the message of a high amplitude pattern and a continuation of an active pattern. The 06z GFS shows new weather threats around the 13th and again around the 17th. So hold onto your hats for a wild ride ahead.
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Thanks for sticking with me during the past week as I substituted for James Spann. He will be back in the saddle once again tomorrow morning as we get back to the regular two-a-day Weather Xtreme videos. I hope that you have a wonderful Sunday. Stay warm and Godspeed.
-Brian-
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