[PBARC] Winter Weather Update for 1/16/2003 AM

[WOLF, EARNEST G]

Winter Storm Forecast

    Issued:   10:15 AM Thursday January 16, 2003

Another Surge of Arctic Air Expected Next Week 


The much anticipated Canadian cold front has now made its way to the Texas coast and will continue rapidly eastward, reaching the Florida Peninsula by Friday morning. Latest surface
observations suggest that the coldest air is lagging about 6 hours behind the actual cold front, so we are not expecting a drastic drop in the temperature immediately following frontal
passage. Still, the coldest temperatures of the season are expected along the entire Gulf coast with low temperatures in the mid to upper 20s from the middle Texas coast, across south
Louisiana, to the Florida Panhandle on Friday and Saturday. The coldest temperatures for the Florida Peninsula will occur Saturday and Sunday with freezing temperatures likely across
some inland areas. Low pressure centered over northern Arkansas will move quickly eastward, spreading a swath of snow from extreme northern Arkansas and Missouri eastward across the
Tennessee Valley to the mid-Atlantic coast. Accumulations could range as high as 6-12 inches in a few places, however, the fast movement of the storm will prevent widespread heavy snow
totals. Northern portions of Arkansas will only see about and inch of snow. We expect temperatures to moderate rather quickly from west to east along the Gulf coast beginning Sunday as
the core of the cold air moves off to the east. 

We remain very concerned about the potential for an even colder outbreak of Arctic air across the deep south next week, particularly around the January 22-26 time frame. Long-range
models continue to suggest that the cold air outbreak next week could be the coldest during January, but significant fluctuations in day-to-day model runs have not given us very high
confidence as to the exact timing and intensity of this very cold air. Some of the computer models attempt to slow the leading edge of this very cold air down once it reaches the
southern Plains due to a developing area of low pressure over the southern Rockies. Very cold Arctic air of this magnitude does not usually slow down once it reaches the southern Plains
and we feel there is a good chance that this very cold air could reach the Gulf coast earlier than what the models are indicating, perhaps as early as Wednesday, the 22nd. We also
expect the southern stream to become a little more active next week and this raises the threat for wintery precipitation across a large area of the deep south due to overrunning. The
associated cloud cover will also make temperature forecasting rather difficult. Computer models usually do a poor job of trying to predict these southern stream disturbances so far in
advance and we will monitor this very closely over the next few days. We would like to stress that there will be at least some chance for freezing rain, sleet or snow across portions of
the deep south during the mid to later part of next week, but confidence is not high. 

As far as temperatures are concerned, we feel rather confident that this airmass will be at least cold enough to produce low temperatures in the 20's from the Texas coast eastward to
the Florida Peninsula during the middle and later part of next week. As mentioned above, cloud cover will be the determining factor as to exactly how cold it gets. We cannot rule out
the possibility that temperatures could be 5-10 degrees colder, teens for lows and upper 20s to low 30s for highs, toward the end of next week. 

The next Winter Storm Forecast will be issued near 10:00 AM Friday. 

George Quenzer 


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---