Late-night confusion
Posted Jan31, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Here we are within 12-18 hours of a long-forecasted winter precipitation event and the major American computer forecast models are showing extremely different scenarios, neither of which seem to match the current state of what's happening on radar.
Welcome to the wonderful world of weather forecasting.
One forecast model takes the entire storm south of us, while the other brings very light snow all day and much heavier mixed precipitation during the evening. By evening, the low pressure systems depicted by these models are several hundred miles apart. Something isn't right.
The national radar has not looked very impressive to me tonight over the middle Mississippi River Valley. The precipitation shield has been very patchy, but of late, it seems to be filling in and advancing to the northeast. So I would still expect some snow getting in here during Thursday morning, just based on radar trends alone.
This storm is coming at us in two pieces, one during the day and one at night, and that only adds to the confusion. One piece could end up stronger that the other. The computer models are probably having a hard time resolving this.
Wintry precipitation still appears likely for Thursday and Thursday night when you consider the sum total of the evidence. I'll be back in the morning to see if it makes any more sense than it does now. It could be entirely different by then.
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