Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Another Round Of Wintry Weather

TWITTER: KATV_WEATHER

We've been saying it's a "winter to remember".  I don't think anyone can argue with that! Before I get into the wintry weather chances tonight,  I want to go back and discuss "SleetPolocolypse".  

I said no snow/ice forecast is perfect.  I'm going to be completely honest with you.  I thought the changeover to sleet in Little Rock would occur around 5-6PM Sunday.  I was getting BLASTED on twitter people calling my forecast "hype" and we got the forecast wrong.  I WAS SWEATING IT OUT FOR SURE!  The change to sleet finally happened around 7:30 in Little Rock.  It seemed like that rain/sleet line held around Mayflower to Sherwood to Cabot for the longest time.  But when the sleet came, it came gangbusters.  Anyway, like I said, the forecast wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn close!

I'm truly amazed ice is still on the ground.  Usually when we get wintry weather in March, it melts quickly due to the higher sun angle.  That hasn't been the case so far.  While the main roads did show remarkable improvement during the day, they are refreezing at night and the side roads still have plenty of ice patches on them.

The records we're breaking are astounding.  Monday's high of 28 degrees was the coldest March high temperature in Little Rock weather history and that dates back to the 1870s.  That 28 degree high happened at midnight.  We never got above 25 Monday afternoon.  Truly amazing!  This will likely end up being one of my top 10 weather events of 2014.

Here's another record the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock tweeted today... " At Little Rock there have been 2 consecutive days w/temps at or below freezing this month, tying 3/1-2/1922 for the most ever in March"

Now onto the wintry weather chances tonight.  This will be NOTHING like last Sunday.  This potent disturbance coming through will produce some precipitation, but most of this will be light and only some of it will fall in the form of frozen precipitation.  Also, it's fast moving so it will only affect us for a few short hours.  I'm going to use the GFS from weatherbell.com

Between 6 PM and midnight tonight, you can clearly see some precip. breaking out in southern AR and you can see an area over OK.  The red line is the freezing line and the blue line is the 35 degree line.  The GFS is indicating some light snow perhaps over portions of central and western Arkansas with areas of light rain as well.
Between midnight and 6 AM, the upper disturbance should crank out a little light snow across SW and central AR with rain further south and east.  AGAIN, THIS WILL BE LIGHT AND NOT AMOUNT TO MUCH IF ANYTHING.
Between 6AM and noon, it's moving away and temperatures are above freezing so any lingering precip is falling as light rain showers.

In summary, this will be light and quick moving.  I also want to stress, this will be nothing like Sunday night.  However, remember, just a little snow/ice can cause slick spots, but it might be tough to distinguish any new slick spots with the ones from last Sunday. LOL.   If anything changes, and it always can, I'll let you know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Definitely a great winter. I believe Joe Bastardi forecasted that the winters of 12-13, 13-14, and 14-15 would be frigid and similar to the winters of the late 1970s. Hopefully next winter is just as good as this one!

Mitchell McDill said...

You did pretty good on the forecast Todd. It did delay a few hours before the rain changed to sleet but not off much. What amazed me was leaving Fayetteville Sunday morning with heavy sleet and thunder and temps in the 20s and driving home to Hot Springs where it was just rain. It took about 12 hours for the conditions NW Arkansas had to reach central Ark! Sometimes I think NW Arkansas is in a different state when it comes to winter weather.

Anonymous said...

How can anyone say it was a good winter? Property damage the result of ice and people who were hurt.

Anonymous said...

How can anyone not appreciate the joy of winter? Nice weather and a wonderful landscape.

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