A touch of snow tonight with a cold front; Dry but very chilly temperatures for the weekend

Light rain showers will continue to exit east-central Ohio this morning as a warm front lifts through Ohio. The bulk of the day should remain dry and clouds will break some this afternoon and allow for peaks of sunshine.

Temperatures this afternoon will warm to the low 50s across the Valley behind the warm front.

Odds for rain showers will return late this afternoon as a cold front approaches the region. Winds out of the south will pick up with the front to around 15 to 20 mph. Gusts along the front may reach 35 mph at times.

As temperatures cool off with the front after sunset, rain will change over to snow showers. Recent model runs have continued to shift the system farther south taking the heavier snowfall along with it. While we will likely see some snow tonight, it will not amount to much in the Valley. Most places will end up with less than an inch at best.

Tonight’s expected snow is just coming into range of the high resolution short range model (18 hours). It’s showing the best odds for any significant accumulating snowfall will be in extreme southern Ohio (Through 5:00 a.m. Saturday).

DRY WEATHER AND CHILLY TEMPS FOR THE WEEKEND
Snow showers will exit the region early Saturday morning and high pressure will begin to take over. Saturday may start out cloudy but those clouds will gradually diminish through the day. Occasional sunshine will break out but it will be downright cold for the first part of April.

Highs on Saturday won’t do much better than the upper 30s to near 40. That’s over 20 degrees colder than where we should be for this time of the year.

Sunday will bring more sunshine but it will still be chilly with highs in the low 40s.

ARE WE EVER GOING TO SEE WARM WEATHER?
The short answer is yes. At some point the sun will win out and this pattern of unusually cold weather will eventually become just a memory.

Rain and snow showers along with cooler than average temperatures will likely continue into early next week. Long range modeling then begins to give us a little hope during the latter part of next week.

A strong upper level storm system over Plains will force a ridge to develop in the eastern US late next week. This will bring a round of severe weather to the Plains but warmer temperatures to Ohio Thursday and Friday.

As the storm system shifts east over the weekend, it may bring storms to east-central Ohio. Temperatures are likely to cool off some beyond that but generally, a warmer pattern should develop that will result in temperatures that are more seasonal here.

We can see the beginning of this pattern shift in the temperature ensemble forecasts. This example is from today’s European model.

The bottom line is we will start to see some improvement as we get toward next weekend. Temperatures do look to improve by mid month bringing an end to the unusually cold pattern we’re stuck in now.

I really don’t think we will see much in the way of above average temperatures through the end of the month, but I do think temperatures will at least swing to readings close to normal.

1 thought on “A touch of snow tonight with a cold front; Dry but very chilly temperatures for the weekend”

Comments are closed.

 

 

Scroll to Top