- A mix of rain and snow will develop across the Washington Region on Friday morning. The mix will gradually change over to light snow showers during the afternoon hours mainly across our northern and western suburbs.
The next image (courtesy TropicalTidbits) shows temperatures falling rapidly between 2 pm Friday and 1 am Saturday:
- Temperatures will plummet into the 20s Friday evening with wind chills dropping into the teens and single digits.
- Widespread low temperatures in the upper teens to lower 20s are expected across the region on Saturday morning (image below courtesy WxBell shows forecast temperatures 7am Saturday)
High temperatures on Saturday will struggle to reach the middle to upper 30s as strong Cold Air Advection (CAA) likely overtakes the effects of the higher March sun-angle (image below courtesy WxBell shows forecast temperatures 4 pm Saturday):
- The models remain consistent in keeping any snow well south of the Washington Area over the weekend.
- Watching Tuesday closely for a potential Nor’easter that could have significant impacts on the Mid-Atlantic & New England.
5:51 am Thursday morning: The very latest forecast ensemble model runs from overnight continue to keep the shield of snow across southern Virginia. The upper-level feature is forecast to reach the coast of the Pacific Northwest on Friday morning (around 7AM) when we will have much better sampling data being ingested into the mathematical model equations (better solutions). So in theory, a nudge north is still possible in future operation runs that come out late tonight. I’m watching it closely but haven’t seen anything promising yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Tim, how confident are you in the models for the weekend storm? I know they have been fairly consistent both from run to run and model to model over the last 36 hours, but with the trend of the models shifting storms south and then back north this winter is it possible that a shift could happen in this case? I have heard other meteorologists state that they think the models may be overplaying the strength of the arctic high that is keeping the storm to our south. I don’t think we will get the bullseye this weekend, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this storm ended up shifting further north and giving us a couple inches, especially considering that the energy responsible for this storm is still over the Pacific Ocean where the data is not as reliable. What do you think?