Snow update number 455

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TTAA00 KUAH 020515

SNOW ANALYSIS 455
UAH WEATHER ANALYSIS DESK
1115 PM CST SUN FEB 1 2009

sorry for being silly. I’ve been sick this weekend, my wife is working overtime due to year-end accounting, so I’ve plenty of time to blog and play with the weather. It’s been fun.

The cold front is along a line from Lexington, Kentucky to Memphis, Tennessee, and the 850 mb 0 C line extends from Cincinnati to northern Arkansas. Any surface low development along the front near the Gulf Coast has been very weak, with pressures only falling very slowly at best.

A fair amount of precipitation has formed along the front, with thunderstorms in east Texas. Some lighter rain has also developed in Mississippi, Louisiana, and west Alabama, associated with weak upper-level impulses and warm air coming in aloft ahead of the front.

There is cold air aloft in this environment, and as cold air moves in from the north, and precipitation brings some cold down with it, the rain could change to light snow briefly, but with warm ground temperatures, no big deal. Here is a profile of temperature and wet bulb from UAH Microwave profiling radiometer:

Freezing at 4500 ft., wet-bulb freezing at 3,900 feet. But, rather cold above that, so I wouldn’t count out a light dusting in extreme north and northeast Alabama, but the main area for snow accumulation will probably be near Nashville. In BHM, we may see a few snow flurries as the rain ends around lunchtime, but that’s about all. Just too much warm air to push out of the way, and warm ground temperatures besides. Official temperatures are taken at 2 m above the ground (about 6 ft.), but even our UAH temp sensor at 0.5 m (19″) shows 53 right now, so the ground didn’t radiate too much before the clouds came in.

Sorry everyone who wanted snow.

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