Snow Returns to the Forecast!

Bad news: It's Monday.

And the good news?

The Patriots are out of the playoffs!

Now let's talk weather...

Arctic weather is dominating the region today-- Temperatures are hovering around 0 degrees, and wind chills are in the -20s.  Expect these conditions to continue through tonight and into tomorrow before temperatures rise to a balmy 20 degrees or so to finish the week.

Image from The Weather Channel/ Weather.com

Once the high pressure system says its final goodbyes to the area, snow will once again enter the picture as a low system passes by. There is still uncertainty regarding the exact placement track of this system, but I am starting to get a general idea. Below is my current forecast track:

1/21/13 1: 30 PM CEWX Forecast Track Update

My current forecast track above is based off several of the current model runs that I trust along with a couple other factors. The factors include a clipper-type system during the same time frame, and the current arctic air surrounding the northern Midwest.

GFS Precip Forecast for Madison, WI. Despite the low precip amounts, ratios will be high due to the arctic air. Image from CoolWx.com

The ensemble runs of the GFS and Euro are not perfectly in line with their operational runs, so confidence is not sky high.

UPDATE: The 12z Euro is in, and it has shifted the system even further south. While I feel the ECMWF placed the storm too far south, it's hard to ignore Euro runs.  The storm will soon be in the time frame of the NAM, so that will add another interesting aspect to the system.

Tomorrow's update will include an updated forecast track as more data continues to roll in, and that update will also likely include my first snow forecast for this storm.

Let's move on to another potential storm for SE Wisconsin:

Models are showing an active weather period for late January into February.  One of the storms has been showing up consistently on GFS runs. Below is the 12z GFS run of that storm.

Image from NWS

Is it foolish to start thinking about a snow storm 10 days away when the models are still having trouble handling a storm 3 days away? Probably. Is it still fun to consider? Absolutely.

Thanks for reading!

-Chris