Wednesday, November 19, 2014

A Very Snowy Decade So Far In Little Rock


I have been getting several questions about the winter weather contest.  I will launch it within the next few days.  I am close to finalizing our grand prize and I'm very excited about it.  As always, the contest will run from December 1 through February 28th.  I hope to give everyone about 7-10 days to get entries into me.

I also want to briefly talk about this weekend.  A fairly strong area of low pressure aloft will swing out of the southwest and bring rain.   A few thunderstorms can also be expected late Saturday into Sunday morning.  What about severe weather?  Yes, it is possible, but I don't think it's going to be widespread.  It's coming in at night PLUS instability levels are not impressive.  I think the bulk of the severe weather with this will be just south of Arkansas.  This can always change and I'm keeping an eye on it.  I think many locations could see around 1-2 inches of rain with some isolated higher amounts.  After a mild Sunday, temperatures return to average or maybe a little below.  I'm keeping an eye on the end of next week.  Some of the data shows another surge of arctic air on or after Thanksgiving.

Now onto the reason behind this post.  It's hard to believe, but we will be half way through this decade next month (2010-2019).  Time flies!  Doesn't it seem it has been snowy the past 5 years?  That's not your imagination.  Since 2010, Little Rock has received 42.4 inches.  If we keep up this pace, by 2019, it COULD be the snowiest decade the metro has ever seen since the 1880s.  That's a big IF too!  We have already received more snow these past 5 years than the entire decade of 1900-1909 (31.9 inches), 1930-1939 (24.6 inches), 1950-1959 (28.4 inches), 1990-1999 (14.9 inches), and 2000-2009 (30.9 inches).  Pretty amazing huh?

Check out the graph below.   The data is courtesy of the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock.  I hope I got all these numbers correct.  It was a lot of adding! LOL


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