Snowflakes to Ring in the New Year?

An upper level disturbance moving out of New Mexico is producing a widespread area of rain and snow over the Southern Plains states.

That’s a little light rain over Arkansas, eastern Texas and southeastern Oklahoma. Not many surface reports showing precipitation though, so much of it is not reaching the ground or is very spotty. Durant OK, just north of the Red River has 39F with moderate rain. Gainesville, Texas, north of Dallas, has 39F with light rain. Ardmore, OK is reporting 34F with light rain.

Northwest of that, it is a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. Again, it is light and spotty. No snow reports in Oklahoma this hour. In the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo has light snow with 28F. Childress has 31F with light snow.

This activity is forecast to move east southeast through the afternoon. It should arrive into Alabama late this evening. It will continue to be light and spotty, and could even weaken further as shown by the RPM model. The GFS is not very bullish on it either.

Temperatures are expected to begin falling this evening as colder air begins to overspread Alabama. Temperature profiles will probably become cold enough to support snow over North and Central Alabama by midnight.

Surface temperatures will likely remain above freezing south of Cullman, and with the light nature of the precipitation, no icing problems are anticipated at this time.

So, if you’re out late tonight, you could see a few snow flurries! The flurries should be gone by early tomorrow. Skies will clear quickly, over western sections around sunrise, in the I-65 corridor by mid-morning and over eastern Alabama by lunch. Highs tomorrow will struggle to get into the 40s with a strong NW wind.

Tomorrow night will feature a hard freeze with lows between 21-25. Sunday highs will again struggle to make 40 and we could see widespread teens by Monday morning. JB is forecasting 18 Tuesday morning and even colder Wednesday morning. While we may go above freezing for a few hours during the day each day between Saturday and Wednesday, lows are going to be iin the teens and 20s on many of the nights.

Folks…this will be an extended period of cold. We could conceivably stay below freezing from Wednesday afternoon into early the following week. We will likely see single digits a couple of the nights, especially Friday and Saturday of next week.

With all the cold, the question of snowfall enters the pictures. This morning’s GFS has introduced the idea of a disturbance Thursday night and Friday that would spread light snow across Alabama. Plausible solution and one we will have to monitor. It had been painting the idea of a big Gulf low and snow storm for next weekend. That idea is still on the table, but pushed back a little later into Monday the 11th. That could happen. But it is too early to be forecast snow this far our. The models will flip flop dozens of times between now and then. The real story for now is the cold. Think now about preparing your homes, businesses, churches, plants, pets and most importantly people for the cold.

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