12/26 - 2:15pm - Still Watching for New Year's Snow

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas yesterday and that the lack of snow around here didn't get anyone down in the dumps.

As we shift our focus to the new year, we may also have to shift our focus to a chance of snow in Louisville. Over the past week, the long-range GFS computer model has been showing a storm tracking through the Gulf states. While the moisture and precipitation with this storm has been suppressed to the south on most model runs, I'm starting to see the (this) season-typical northward trend in the track of this storm.

The Euro model has this storm tracking from the Gulf Coast to Virginia, which would be a fairly decent track for us to have snow in Kentuckiana if enough moisture accompanies the storm. My worry is that there may not be enough cold air in place to counter the warm air being brought north by the storm, and this may negatively affect our snow chances. It's still too early to tell if this will indeed be a problem, but at least the storm track is good at this point.

Basically, the graphic from the last post with the potential storm tracks of this system still applies. There are a lot of factors like phasing, the polar vortex, and model-to-model differences that need time to get hammered out. I'd say this is our best chance for snow so far this season, and I think this is certainly a system that bears watching.