Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt: Brace for wet stuff, whether it ends up being rain or snow
Readin goes here and here and here 4 decks please.
Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.
kevin.myatt
@roanoke.com
981-3341
Weather with Kevin Myatt
Recent columns
- Winter trying again to show up with snow
- We got graupel, but not on official record
- Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
- Column archive
Read the Weather Journal blog
- Many looking past mild, quiet week toward possibly wild weekend
- Sprinkles or flurries possible Tuesday, but maybe something bigger for the weekend?
- For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
- Weather Journal blog
#swvawx on Twitter
@KevinMyattWx
The second act of the weather system affecting us today is a mystery.
A strong low pushing through the Ohio Valley will sweep a cold front steadily eastward today, shoving through a mass of Gulf of Mexico moisture that promises rainfall of an inch or more that will be helpful for our drought situation.
There's nothing mysterious about that.
But the front will hang up near or a little east of us. A second low pressure system is expected to develop along the Gulf Coast and move northeast along that front Thursday into Friday.
It will spread a new shield of precipitation north and west of its track, as lows of this nature typically do. But what kind of precipitation? Probably rain to start.
Temperatures are likely to be a little above freezing as the moisture arrives, but will gradually get colder as the storm pulls in northwest winds behind it. Trailing this low pressure system will be an upper level low, a swirl of colder air aloft.
If the low tracks far enough eastward to allow more cold air to invade at the surface, and the upper level pocket of cold air can move on top of us with thick moisture still in place, there is the potential for widespread snow during some portion of the precipitation Thursday and early Friday.
So the mystery that remains to be solved is whether all of the factors will line up just right for snow across all of Southwest Virginia come Thursday evening. Right now, I'm skeptical that anything more than snow showers will happen.
