Marching Into The BIG Chill

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Gosh, I have soooo much to blog about today.  First of all, the biggest "weathergeeks" in central Arkansas had a fantastic meeting Tuesday night at the local chapter of the National Weather Association/American Meteorological Society.  It was held at the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock and meteorologist John Lewis had a fantastic presentation dealing with patterns around the globe which affect Arkansas Weather.  I hope you enjoyed some of my "live tweeting" about what to expect through the summer of 2013.  If you get a change, scroll through my tweets and check it out.  By the way, I'm proud to serve as chapter Vice President over the past few years.
  The winter weather contest is about to come to an end at midnight Friday and the leader is Darin Thomas.  Will Darin win?  Maybe.  However, I would not doubt if Harrison picked up at least .1'' of snow by then.  It would take .5'' of snow in Harrison to change the leaders board.  While that seems doubtful, never rule it out! I'll keep you updated on that.

I have been talking about the big chill for the first week of March for awhile now and I think it's possible to challenge record lows.  Not at Little Rock since weather records go back into the 1800s.  However, in North Little Rock where records only date back to the 1970's, I would not doubt to see low temperatures within a few degrees of those record lows late this weekend into the beginning of next week.  The GFS mos, which is well known for being too warm in a pattern like this, has a high in Little Rock Saturday of 42.  That may be too warm!  Remember, this horrible, horrible model showed a high yesterday (Tuesday) of 57 degrees just last week.  The high ended up being 46 degrees set at 2:38AM.  The remainder of the day was spent in the low 40s.  In other words, it was 15 degrees off!!!!  I still can't believe some only use this model to forecast.  The Euro handled it much, much better.  So will it be 15 degrees off Saturday?  Probably not as big of an error, but I think it's too warm.  Many locations will not get out of the 30s and wind chill readings will be in the teens and 20s.  What a way to begin meteorological spring eh?  As the National Weather Service said, this may be the coldest first week in March in more than a decade.

While I see the cold relaxing next week, I don't think we'll see anything too mild.  I'm hesitating to even mention this here, but what the heck.  I use this blog to show you what's on my mind.  Some of the data has been pointing towards another significant storm system to affect the western and central United States around March 10th.  We're talking about something that's almost 2 weeks away!  Forecasting specifics would be meteorological malpractice due to the long range uncertainty.  There could be a range of weather from rain, to snow, to ice, to severe weather, or a combination.  Just know that there could be a some interesting weather around that time period and I'll let you know what I see.

Below are a few maps dealing with the cold air for the weekend.

Weak disturbances will move through a northerly flow aloft.  This pattern is moisture starved, but can still squeeze out flurries and snow showers.  The Euro snowfall map through Sunday morning shows portions of northern, western, and even central Arkansas could see a few flakes fly.  If anything does accumulate, it would be very minor and most likely up north.  If it falls before Friday at midnight, it COULD change the leader board of the winter weather contest.

Here's the Euro temperature map for noon Saturday.  Most of the northern half of the state is below 40 degrees.  The solid white line is the 32 degree line.

The Euro valid Sunday morning at 6AM.  The 25 degree isotherm is running through far southern Arkansas.  This indicates most of the state will be in the lower 20s and I would not doubt teens in some locations.  The record is 17 degrees set in 2002 for North Little Rock.  In Little Rock, the record low is 11 in 1943.  That record will more than likely stand.

This is the lastest run of the GFS around March 10th.  See those oranges and yellows in TX and Mexico.  That's the storm in the upper levels that could affect us down the road.  It's wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too early for specifics, but I wanted to show this to you.

Here it is on the previous run of the GFS.  Its presentation is completely different, but it has the storm.  There is absolutely no way to forecast how this will impact our weather, but it could be major or minor.  Here's my point, there could be a round of rain, storms, etc around the 10th.  Let's watch it.