Latest update on Winter Storm for Presidents Day

Thursday, February 11, 2016 - 7:20pm

As I stated in my blog post last night concerning this setup "The timing of the arrival of the moisture. How far east the moisture gets without warm air aloft interfering" I knew that was going to play a part in how this forecast continues to adjust. This morning I eluded to a possibility of a higher amount of snow accumulation. I stated at the end of that forecast post. "Keep in mind things can and probably will change a few times with the Monday forecast". Well that it has. Now the models are indicating that the high pressure bringing the cold air to the Carolina's may take a turn to the north before the moisture arrives. If that occurs we will see the precipitation start out as around 6am Monday morning. Snow would possible accumulate to around an inch. Then we would see a transition over to sleet and freezing rain. Finally this event looks to end with all rain. The real question at this point is how fast that will occur. Based on model data at this point I am going to set the forecast for Monday like this.

70% Chance of a Wintry Mix. Starting out as all snow around 6am Monday morning. We will likely see a transition to sleet between 8 & 11am. Around 2pm we should see a transition to freezing rain before finally going to all rain around 7pm Monday night. 

Again this will most likely change over the next few model runs. At this point it's best to watch the trends to see if the models continue to point toward the wintry mix or if they take a turn back to mainly snow. Honestly it would most likely be sometime during the day on Saturday before anyone gets a real solid lock on the forecast for this storm. 

At this point the best thing to do is prepare for a winter storm of some type and understand that this one will most likely not linger as long as the event we had a few weeks ago. I will continue to track the models and update the forecast as it warrants. As always thank you for following Rowan County Weather!  

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