STORM SETUP:

An area of low pressure will slide southeast through the Midwest and eventually the Ohio Valley bringing a narrow, but intense band of heavy, wet snowfall to portions of the Hoosier state. Some of us will see an impactful snow, while others won’t see a single flake! Here’s the latest:

ALL OF THE DETAILS: (you can scroll down to the actual forecast if this isn’t your thing)

I’ll start by showing you the overall set up and what the latest computer models are showing, and then we’ll show you our Region Weather forecast. Here’s the latest run of the GFS (American model) for Saturday at 4AM, 10AM, 4PM:

(click on images to enlarge)

You’ll notice it brushes Newton and Jasper counties but keeps most of Lake, Porter, and La Porte counties out of the snow completely. While I normally don’t rely on the GFS, I do agree with it’s thinking on keeping the bulk of the snow in our southernmost counties.

Let’s look at the European model for the 4AM, 10AM, and 4PM hours:

(click on images to enlarge)

The Euro keeps the bulk of the snow away from all of the Region with just a few flakes in Newton and Jasper counties.

We’ll look at one more model, the NAM (North American Model):

(click on images to enlarge)

WHOA! The NAM brings the system directly over the entire Region! What’s the deal? This is what we call the outlier, but it still needs to be considered. It’s essentially the “what-if” scenario that we as meteorologists have to deal with in the back of our head all the time.

If the NAM were to come true, these are the snow totals it’s spitting out:

These are NOT our forecast numbers, but just an example of why a forecast isn’t always easy…

SO, that’s all the model data–now for our forecast…

REGION WEATHER’S WINTER STORM FORECAST:

This is one of those storms with a VERY FINE LINE between 0 inches and 4-6 inches of snow. Understanding how difficult it is to forecast the exact mile at which this boundary occurs is crucial–but here’s our best guess at accumulations in inches:

We’re thinking this won’t even be a storm for Porter and La Porte County. Dry air from the northeast tends to erode snowfall in these situations…so I’m thinking this will protect Porter and La Porte counties from the bulk of the snow. Lake County will be close to the snow, but I’m not forecasting much of an impact there either. Newton and Jasper counties, especially the southern half of both, stand the highest chance for snowfall. Even then, if this system heads any further south–we may escape without an impactful snow.

So, in summary for our northern tier of counties:

And for our southern counties:

As always, we’ll continue to keep everyone updated right here and on our FB Page!