It’s Back! Winter Weather Returns To The Region This Week

[SUNDAY EVENING UPDATE: Please check the regionweather.com homepage for the LATEST UPDATE]

A complex storm system will move through the Region this week bringing rain, snow, and blustery, much colder air later this week. Let’s dive into the details.

Here’s a big picture look at the evolution of our week of weather ahead:

WHAT WE’RE EXPECTING

Clouds will thicken up throughout the day Monday in response to an area of low pressure approaching from the southwest. We’ll have temps that are well above freezing, so we’re looking at all rain when it arrives late Monday.

Complicating this entire storm system is another area of low pressure bringing much colder air and some moisture in from the northwest. Our first low will head through the Ohio Valley Monday night into Tuesday morning. At the same time, our second low will be moving in from the northwest with that cold air. With showers still in the area, we’re predicting a changeover Tuesday from rain to snow as that colder air filters in.

By Tuesday night into Wednesday, this second low will begin taking over as a large-scale trough develops across the eastern US. This will help drag even colder air south and spin up another nice storm as this second low heads northeast. The result will be winds that begin to crank Wednesday, temps that plummet, and on-going periods of snow.

By Thursday we’re left with cold air and lake effect snows in the snowbelt, otherwise we’ll begin to quiet down with several days of cold lingering beyond the storm system.

The biggest impacts as of now (Sunday) look to be northwest of the Region into Illinois. This storm still needs watched as some of the models are painting a much more impactful storm even locally. Models could easily shift the axis of snow north or south bringing a much different scenario to northwest Indiana.

SNOWFALL

In terms of snowfall, it’s simply too early to give amounts. If this were a single low pressure that zips on through (like 90% of storms), we could talk numbers at this point. Our problem is this storm system involves two separate low pressures that raise questions about how they interact, how much moisture they’ll wring out of our atmosphere, and when exactly our changeover happens. Like we mentioned, it’s a complex system with answers we’ll have to get from the next few model runs.

But you know us! We can at least PEEK at the model snowfall amounts! But you have to promise to not remember them or share them because at this point, they’re wrong. But they give us an idea of the potential of this storm. And the potential looks impressive!

The GFS “Ehhh” Model:

The GEM “Whoa!” model:

The EURO “Yikes!” model:

What I’m concerned with is that I tend to lean Euro-heavy in most of my forecasting and the Euro paints a much snowier scene than the rest of the models at this point. We’ll obviously wait on future model runs to get a better handle on this storm–but when we talk potential–this has the potential to be a good snowstorm–something we haven’t seen on ANY model or with any storm this winter. Stay tuned for sure!

And one more for kicks–I think this one has the best look to it right now based on the track of the low, intensity of the precip, etc. We’ll see again tomorrow!