You may have seen some local forecasts the past few days mentioning the chance of a bit of freezing rain on Monday....enough to cause travel problems but not enough for much beyond that.
Well, after looking at the National Weather Service website Saturday morning, I have to say that we may be in store for something much worse from Monday all the way through possibly Thursday. The tough part of the forecast is that there are so many variables to try to predict:
1) How much moisture will be available, considering how dry it has been lately?
2) How long will temperatures be below freezing? How long will the arctic air hold on?
3) Will the heaviest rain fall in parts of the state that are above freezing or below freezing?
Right now, it looks like the majority of precipitation will fall as freezing rain. Not good. When you hear pinging sounds on the windows, that is sleet, which is much better than plain rain when it is below freezing. We may have freezing drizzle during the day Monday, but the heaviest rain will probably start Monday night into Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, some models have freezing rain falling through Wednesday.
How much freezing rain? The two main computer models have differing opinions. One model says between 0.25 and 0.75 inches of rain, which would cause travel problems and maybe a few power problems, but nothing like last year. The other model shows Armageddon, with between 1 and 2 inches of FREEZING rain. This would be another crippling ice storm like what we had last winter. Right now I am siding (wishcasting) with the 0.25-0.75 inch forecast, but I will post an update later if my thinking changes.
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