FOX Carolina 21Rain Overnight & Model Mayhem for Next Weekend

Sunday:  We'll expect the round of rain in the early morning hours to move out before sunrise, but there will be some lingering light rain around in some towns.  While some of the clouds will stick around Sunday, the majority of the rain will be done by around lunchtime and some sun will come out in places.  That sun will help temperatures climb into the 59°-64° range across the Upstate/NE Georgia.  Expect upper 50s and low 60s for Western NC.

 

Monday:  There's a chance that the tail-end of this system could produce some Western NC snow for the early morning hours on Monday as colder air filters in on the backside.  Although, this cold air will be marginal at best, so I don't expect much snow and there could even be some scattered rain and snow showers as more of a mix comes down.  Accumulations aren't expected to pile up.  As for the rest of Monday, our sky will be clearing across the Upstate with more sunshine than clouds as highs make it into the 55°-57° range with Western NC highs ranging from 45°-52°.

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Next Weekend Discussion:  Trends on recent forecast models for the last several days have shown the setup for a weak, suppressed storm in the Gulf of Mexico.  There have even been quite a few near-miss-snows for the southeast shown on projections.  You haven't heard us mention these trends because this was shown out beyond the 7-day range and not worth much discussion. 

 

Well, we're inside of 7-days now, so let's get to it.  After this morning's 12z GFS forecast model went against the recent trend of producing a suppressed storm in the Gulf of Mexico, this afternoon's 18z and more notably tonight's 0z GFS brought the entire trend back (and into an even more favorable look). 

 

It looks like next weekend could be a close call for some sort of a winter storm somewhere in the southeast, but there's really no telling where or who will be impacted.  Tonight's 0z GFS projection brought a strong & energized arctic jet south... on a collision course with an upper-level system in Texas/the southern jet - those two systems seen here: http://tinyurl.com/77rqx8y.  Ultimately, the timing of both jet streams (the northern and southern jets) coming together only barely interacted, but mostly missed.  Tonight's 0z showing was a close enough call that all eyes need to pay some real close attention, or risk throwing something on a 7-day forecast completely out of the blue in the coming days.  Importantly, the GFS has a bias of being too fast in pushing the arctic front too far east in the northern stream (for an example: think last Christmas when the arctic jet was too far ahead of the southern jet for quite a few model runs... until around 2 days prior to the storm... then BAM, a partial phase of the two systems and Christmas snow happened for the Carolinas).   I'm not saying I'm expecting a trend of this whole thing coming together in the days ahead, but then again I wouldn't be surprised either because we have seen this scenario play out before.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, the timing could work out the other way, too... with even more of a miss. 

 

Overall, it looks like we will have either one of the following: 1) some sort of gulf system on our hands with winter weather likely across parts of the southeast OR... 2) a Cuban-diver of a storm as the cold air suppresses the storm-track south... could even have 3) a storm that intensifies so rapidly in the Gulf of Mex. that it tracks along the Appalachian Mtns (just west of us) wrapping in much more warm air around here while drilling the Tennessee Valley with very, very heavy snow.  All these options are on the table.