Published Saturday, December 26, 2020
High pressure will build over eastern Ohio today allowing for a dry forecast through Sunday. The arctic air in place today will warm into the low-40s on Sunday as the high shifts east and sets up a warmer southerly flow. With better odds of sunshine tomorrow and warmer air, we’ll see some snowmelt and much improvement in the condition of those secondary roads.
The next system will move into the region Sunday night. Recent guidance has dried this system out a bit but we will need to keep slight chances for rain showers in the forecast Sunday night into early Monday. This will be a quick-hitter and any rain chances should exit Monday morning. Temperatures locally will get knocked back a bit behind the Monday system but nothing as extreme as they are today.
Our weather should remain benign Tuesday and Wednesday. Our attention then turns to another tricky system that may impact the Valley on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Another potent low pressure system will move into the Great Lakes region spreading rain showers into east-central Ohio on Thursday. Concurrently, a secondary low pressure system will develop in the south and migrate north. This may develop into a fairly dynamic weather system as a cold front sweeps across the area. At some point, the rain on Thursday will change over to snow showers Thursday night. Snow showers could then continue into New Year’s Day.
There are many similarities with this system compared to our Christmas storm. However, this one seems to be lacking the bitter arctic air that moved into the region with the Christmas storm.
There are big differences in the modeling as one would expect this far out but it does appear that perhaps we could receive another shot of snow in time to ring in the new year. This bears watching over time as it develops.
Some wintry precipitation will likely occur on New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day timeframe but at this time it does not appear nearly as significant as our Christmas storm.
With the general warming temperatures through the upcoming week, we should see much if not all of the current snowpack melt ahead of next week’s system.
Enjoy the weekend. Be safe (and kind) out there.
