Good evening bloggers,
Las Vegas, NV has heavy snow tonight. The NWS office in Las Vegas has recorded 3.6" of snow! So in the past two weeks it has snowed in New Orleans, Houston, and Las Vegas. You don't think this is a strange weather pattern? And according to the LRC this will be repeating on schedule every 50 days or so. We will be dry all night, but what about Thursday?
We are going to have another very interesting day of weather Thursday. A storm now over Southern California will be racing our way on Thursday morning. A surface low will develop over Kansas Thursday and it will try to pull warmer air into our region. The warmer surge of air will be limited along and north of the surface lows path. There is a warm front that will be lifting north. Look at the forecast map that I made for Thursday night:
It will be dry tonight through the morning rush hour. This is such a challenging forecast. It is forecast to be 43 degrees at arond 5,000 feet above the surface. As rain starts falling some of this warmer air will work its way down to the ground. This is one of the reasons why temperatures will slowly rise, hopefully to above freezing by evening. Some areas may stay below freezing when the heavier rain develops. Thunderstorms are also possible Thursday evening. Right now we expect it to stay dry through the morning rush hour and then we will be watching closely for developing precipitation. This doesn't rule out the potential for some freezing drizzle of snow grains in the morning. The models won't pick up on this very light precipitation.
So, some ice accumulation is possible on Thursday afternoon and evening. This storm should end Thursday night before any major ice storm develops.
Then, we focus our attention on Saturday. This is just fascinating, don't you think? Wow! This is an unusual Arctic front and blast that will arrive by Saturday evening. There could be some snow at times beginning Saturday night into Sunday, but the Arctic front is so strong by Sunday that only very light snow would be likely during the Chiefs game with 20-30 below zero wind chill factors.
Look at this map, above. This front is coming in from the northwest and the air behind this front will likely get down to 30 below zero across Montana and the Dakota's....OUCH!
Watch our newscast at 10 PM. And, then Jeremy will get you updated in the morning with his thoughts beginning at 5 AM on NBC Action News.
Gary