Tuesday, February 24, 2009

2/24 - 3:45pm - A Short Warm-Up

If you're sick of 40-degree weather, I have good news for you! Temperatures will bump up into the 50's tomorrow, with 60's expected for Thursday. A cold front passing through early Friday morning will dampen things back into the 40's, but a couple days in the 50's and 60's isn't a bad break in the middle of February.

Rain chances will pick up tomorrow evening as an area of low pressure tracks up to the Great Lakes from the Plains. Storms will become likely late on Thursday with the approaching cold front to the south of the low. It looks like the storms will be strong, but it's still too early to tell if they will be severe. I think there is potential for some isolated severe weather, but an outbreak looks very unlikely because there is not much instability to work with.

The 12z GFS takes the low coming through the region on Saturday well to our south, suppressing most of the moisture down that way as well. After seeing some of the solutions yesterday, I'm not sold on that southern suppression and I think the low will track back north in successive model runs. This kind of setup has been happening all winter in the GFS, where a low is suddenly supressed southward for a few model runs and then quickly corrects northward in just one or two runs. The main thing is that we could see some precipitation on Saturday, but the track of this low and how much cold air comes south from the Great Lakes will determine whether it is rain or snow.

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