Tough call for Monday Night

This Monday night has an interesting setup that really hasn't come together yet. This is one of the times the forecast is very difficult. Several models going in different directions all based on the location of a low pressure that is going through the early stages of "bomb" cyclogenesis.What is "bomb" cyclogenisis you ask? Basically its what occurs when a storm's area of lowest pressure experiences a rapid drop of more than 24 milibars in 24 hours.At the same time a low pressure system could set itself up over the middle portions of the state of Virginia. With the models that are currently out there I am seeing various returns on the precipitation we could get. 

Let's start with the probabilities maps. Looking at the probability of 1 inch of snow in Rowan County Monday night. Is about a 30-40% chance. 

Now if we take those Probabilities and bump them up to 2 inches of snow in the county there's still a 20-30% chance of accumulating snow in the county Monday night.

Now that would be the start of my forecast believing we could see accumulating snow in the county on Monday night. However, you can't take the word of one source. So let's look at the SREF (Short Range Ensemble Forecasting) Plume and how its staking up.First a look at the QPF (Quantitive Precipitation Forecast) run is showing. As you can see form the illustration below the mean on the run is 0.21 inches of precipitation. Now based on what the temperatures could be Monday night the 1-2 inches of snow is possible.

Then you have to take a deeper look. The total snow run only shows 0.70 inches of accumulating snow for the county. Clearly that's less than the 1-2 inches other areas of the models are indicating. 

Taking one last view of the SREF Plume would be the PTYPE which is essentially what the models are indicating for what type of precipitation is likely to fall. Snow is the blue line for Monday night and it barely registers. While the green line for rain is at around a 50% chance.

Now if we take the big models into play. The North American Model keeps the low off the coast of North Carolina and the moisture far enough away to only give us rain chances.

The GFS Model also keeps the low far enough east that rain is more likely for us on Monday night.

Then lastly if you take in the EURO composite model it even appears the low will be far enough east for rain to be likely.

The best thing I can really say at this point for Monday night is that I feel like we will see mostly light rain with a possibility of snow mixing in near the end. At this point I think it is unlikely we see any snowfall accumulation. I will continue to track the models but if you are wanting snow the low would need to track further to the west for Rowan County to have any snowfall potential from this system. As always thank you for following Rowan County Weather!