A brief break in the weather tonight and Monday morning will be followed by the approach and passage of a strong low-pressure system Monday evening and Tuesday. Very cold weather is expected from mid to late week.
Calm before the storm. We should remain dry overnight as high pressure and dry air dominate the skies overhead. It will be cold Sunday night with very little in the way of clouds to help hold in any heat we gained with today’s sunshine and most neighborhoods will dip to the single digits late tonight.
Warmer air will begin to migrate into east-central Ohio before sunrise Monday as a warm front lifts through the region. Temperatures will continue to rise through the day to around 40°. Unfortunately, with the day starting out with some sunshine, clouds will increase through the afternoon along with those temperatures.
The increasing clouds are in response to strong low pressure moving into the Great Lakes region. This system will eventually spread rain showers into the Valley by Monday evening.
As the system’s cold front crosses after midnight Monday night, rain will change over to sleet, then eventually snow. Snow showers will continue for a few hours which means that snow is likely to have impacts for the Tuesday morning commute.
Although there will be plenty of moisture available to work with and snowfall can be moderate at times, this will be a fairly quick-moving system. This will help limit snow accumulation locally. Snow accumulation early Tuesday morning through Tuesday evening looks to run in the 3″ to 5″ range but models have generally trending toward less snow. I’ll work on a detailed snow forecast for Monday morning.
Cold temperatures will then become the story as arctic cold air sinks into the Ohio Valley. Temperatures Tuesday morning in the low 20s gradually diving to the teens by Tuesday evening. They’ll continue a steady downward spiral to -2° early Wednesday morning. We’ll be lucky if we see temperatures getting much above 0° during the day Wednesday.
Wednesday night will bring the most brutal cold as most neighborhoods crash well below zero. On top of that, winds will stay up a bit and wind chills in the -15° to -25° range will be possible locally. Wind Chill Advisories and Warnings are likely.
It’s going to be really cold and breezy for a few days but the cold temperatures will begin to lessen some as we head into the weekend. Secondly, arctic air such as this is very dry and there will be few disturbances riding through. Those two factors will keep any opportunities for snow showers at a bare minimum.
We’ll keep low odds for a snow shower in place for Friday as an upper-level disturbance moves through and temperatures begin recovering back to the 20s.
WEEKEND AND BEYOND
There is a lot of model spread as we get into the weekend. We do undergo a warming trend so thankfully, those arctic temperatures won’t stick around too long. Our next best chance of precipitation will arrive late in the weekend with the next weather system. Current temperatures outlooks keep rain as the primary precipitation type.
The latest update from the NWS Climate Prediction Center indicates that temperatures may be near average, or just slightly below average through the 6 to 10 day period
