Good late morning bloggers,
Watch NBC Action News Midday at 11 AM....Meteorologist Brett Anthony will update our snowfall forecast. And, then our weather team will be all over this developing storm during our 5 and 6 PM weathercasts! We will be Nowcasting this as it is developing!
The computer models have come out with a farther south solution to this storm this morning. With it being just a few hours away from being cold enough for snow, I am buying these solutions. The storm goes through a transformation as we move into tonight and this will complicate matters for pinning down this storm system. Look below at the 10 AM surface map:
The surface low is on the Red River, southwest of Ardmore, OK. This surface cyclone is quite strong and is pulling in copious amounts of moisture. It is in the 70s with dewpoints in the 60s south of this front. There is a HIGH RISK of severe thunderstorms with possible long track tornadoes later today as this moves east over Arkansas. This could be a very violent day down south. As the storm moves east colder air will continue moving into our region. The rain will change to sleet and then to snow before midnight. The earlier it changes over the more snow you will get. Look below at the latest GFS totals forecast by 6 AM, and the storm won't be over until around noon on Wednesday, so you can add another .10 to .20" to these totals if the GFS has this correct.
The NAM was similar and our in house computer model was a bit wetter too. So, we are leaning towards higher amounts of snow and this will become a MAJOR WINTER STORM tonight and Wednesday. Kansas City may go above 6 inches of snow way up north, and this will likely include higher amounts down south. There are still some questions that we need to answer. But, I heavily lean in the direction of a farther south solution, so we may be dropping that 6-10 inch band the two counties farther south as we had discussed earlier. This would place areas north of downtown KC into that heavier band, with areas to the south getting into the 3 to 6 inch band!
We will update the blog later! This hasn't happened yet!
Gary