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katie wrote:would be kind of fun to have it just once tho!

Jan 26…2:15 pm
The LEXDOME may be in full effect…

There are more rumors and whisperings going around about the blizzard coming the end of the week than I care to think about. A friend of mine sent me an email that there are companies preparing for a foot and a half of snow and wanted to know what I thought of it. What it boils down to is there are some very irresponsible forecasters out there that love to hype everything…and when they miss…which they most always do…then it brings all of us down with them. I thought we had chased all those people out of town…oh well.

Kids, here’s what’s going on…

1) There will be a big storm on the weather maps late Thursday into Saturday

2) It will be dumping A LOT of snow on someone…but not necessarily in your backyard.

3) There will be a big shot of Arctic air coming south drilling into the system.

4) The modelling (all of it) is trending south at least for now.

Here’s what we don’t know…and NOBODY knows

1) The path of the low. The thinking is a relatively flat wave between the Gulf and I-20. If it’s north, then the snow area is north, if it’s south then it’s another miss. This low is still in the Pacific.

2) How hard the Arctic air will drill into the system. We really won’t get a grip on this until late Wednesday or even early Thursday. The harder it drills the more south the snow will be. With these setups as well there will be a very sharp northern cutoff to the snow. 40 or 50 miles could mean the difference between 1/2 a foot and nothing.

Everybody relax…at this point Nashville has a better chance than we do for the ‘big one’…but that’s what it is now…just chances. Again, our first call comes tomorrow. Pay no attention to any other numbers until then. You’ll still have time to prep if it’s even necessary….until then just keep aware of the forecasts.

With love…

The Voice of Reason….
Posted: January 26th, 2010 under Bill's Blog.


Jan 26…10:45 am
Reason # 27 why you don’t yell and scream about big snows 4 days in advance…

Now this is still in model world…which often doesn’t resemble reality much…but if you read last night’s 1000 word extravaganza there’s a passage in there about some snow lovers may come away frustrated by the end of this week.

Last night’s Euro run and this morning’s NAM may actually cause resident snowlover Web Master Jim to pop a vein as they both have the Arctic air overwhelming the low in our part of the world and sending a BIG snow to our south.

Now kids, the snow is still part of our conversation…and since we’re talking about Thursday night through Friday it’s just that, a conversation. We’ll still be talking about snow in our forecasts tonight. We’ll still be talking about POTENTIAL for something interesting…but that’s it.

We’ll have more later…
Posted: January 26th, 2010 under Bill's Blog.


Jan 25…9:45 pm
It’s amazing how a couple of little sentences can get y’alls attention. (again cue the ominous music). We’ll get to the latter part of the week in a minute.

Before we get to that…say good bye to “The January Thaw”. What an amazing turn around after the first 13 days of January averaging more than 15 degrees below normal at 24.6°. The turn was the 14th, so the 14th through today (25th) was 24° warmer on average (10 above normal) coming in at over 48° for those 12 days. It’s tough to find words to descirbe that kind of flip…but incredible comes to mind. If you’ve been reading ye ol’ blog here we were telling you now that the thaw was going to be temporary, and the flip occurred today with the arrivial of normal cold at first followed by a couple of shots of Arctic air…the coldest of which will be this weekend.

Before all that transpires though…we’ve got A LOT of fun and games on the weather map kids. First off, the dippin’ dots snow of today. The showers that were coming through were a sign of a lot of instability in the atmosphere. As the showers came by they would dynamically lift the air…when you do that you chill the entire column so what would begin as rain would change to sleet as the column cooled and eventually over to a graupel (snow pellet) and snow as the atmosphere became cold enough for snow throughout the column. The graupel occurs in the most violent part of the convective cell (the shower) as snowflakes encounter supercooled water (water in liquid form below 32°f). The supercooled water sticks to the snowflakes forming a coating of ice around the snowflake, crushing its original structure and making the snow pellet. After the violent part of the convective cell passes (where it’s also very windy) to shower finished as snow because the air had less vertical movement and remained cold enough to sustain snow. It was a fun process to watch today…and boy could that stuff come down hard!

A more traditional light snow/snow shower will be around into Tuesday morning (especially across the north and the orographically favored areas of eastern Kentucky). Accumulations look to be minor…dusting to an inch in a few of the aformentioned favored places…which doesn’t mean you’ll wake up to an inch of snow in your backyard…most will have substantially less. The first salvo of cold will be with us on Tuesday…so welcome back to that part of winter.

Now for the late week shenanigans…this one could be a lot of fun…and could prove frustrating for some before it’s all said and done. We’ve got pure, unadulterated Arctic air on the move pressing southward from the Plains of Canada. We’ll have a decent low pushing at us from the southern branch (hitting California now). The Arctic jet and the southern branch are eventually going to phase over the eastern third of the continent and as that happens…kaboom, some bombogenesis along the east coast with another major blizzard on the map.

Now obviously we live between where the storm is now, and where it will end up…so what happens to us in between? Well of course that’s the million dollar question and we can provide at least a few possible answers here. (We’re talking Thursday night through Friday with this…so chronologically a long way out and BEFOREwe start sounding any warning bells) There is going to be a big snowmaker somewhere between I-20 and I-70 (that’s a lot of real estate if you look at a map). We are within the potential zone…but at this point this is all it is a potential. The computer modelling taken verbatim (DGEX, BAMS, and even the GFS to a degree)puts the heaviest snow (again at this distance) in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee with a VERY sharp dropoff on its northern flank. The Euro is in the ballpark and the Canadian is broader with the moisture, but also not quite as cold keeping the bulk of the Arctic air closer to the Lakes. The usual model correction at this distance is for systems to drift north with time as we approach onset…it’s the usual, not the guarantee do it everytime.

Now for us and big snows we need some thing to happen here differently than other part of the country. We really don’t want a big storm winding up along the Gulf (under most circumstances). When that happens it lifts too much warm air on its front side on our side of the Appalachians…and hello 35 degree rain. For us, a flatter wave, without the dramatic warm advection is a much better scenario with the low then bombing out AFTER it passes our longitude. Again, at this point that seems to be the way we’re heading…but that’s also a double edged sword. Less warm advection all means less moisture advection…so for us it’s a VERY fine line…wrapping up, but not too much.

Like we said, this is going to be a fun week with lots to talk about. It’s NOT time for the bread and milk…but it is time to be more aware of the forecasts. The winter started big, we got to relax for a couple of weeks, now let’s see if we finish big as we’re beginning the final acts.

Wednesday will be our first call (getting specific). We really have to wait until the player crosses the Rockies to see what the path will likely be. We’d rather be right once (with plenty of time to prepare if necessary) than guessing all over the place too far out with too many variables in play. That’s how we roll…

Speaking of which, you may have noticed we took our Flood Warning bug down Monday evening. It’s a river flooding event that was already peaking. The folks in harm’s way are already aware of the water level and should have taken appropriate actions. We felt it wasn’t necessary to keep that on your screen until late tomorrow given that…you may enough on your screens later this week…

Well, there’s a thousand words to get your week started….it’ll be a week with a lot to discuss.

Enjoy your Tuesday.
Posted: January 25th, 2010 under Bill's Blog.

katie wrote:WOW! 10 inches is too much for me ( ), would be kind of fun to have it just once tho!

E_HILLMAN wrote:

katie wrote:would be kind of fun to have it just once tho!

bubbles wrote:E....that was just too much to read. Besides I couldn't quit thinking about that 10 inches..........

E_HILLMAN wrote:Rod might actually get over 6 inches in Nancy finally!

E_HILLMAN wrote:NO Snow you little Nancy Boy.

E_HILLMAN wrote:Does that stand for Cincinnati or Cynthiana? I know it don't stand for Georgetown or Leesburg... lol

katie wrote: Seriously, you all be very very careful down there this weekend... news showed ICE ICE ICE all over the place! Hope you at least get to keep your electric & heat...