Travel trouble for some the week of Thanksgiving

AccuWeather

During the busiest travel week of the year, severe storms could have major impacts. AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish has the details on when and where.

Transcript

00:00It's feeding time here on the AccuWeather Network and on AccuWeather.com.

00:04We're going to take a look at the forecast feed and we want to dig into the travel impacts

00:07for Thanksgiving week and also look a little farther down the line.

00:10How will the Thanksgiving weekend play out?

00:13There are some questions about some snow, perhaps for some, not for everybody.

00:17We got to keep a close eye out for this.

00:19Just quickly, the first storm of the week is going to be kind of a high impact one in

00:22the Plains.

00:23So I want to get right to that here.

00:24Monday, Monday night, we've got a big dip in the jet stream with some chilly air under

00:28a trough.

00:29Actually air aloft, upstairs, and at the surface, you can see that flow coming out

00:33of the Gulf.

00:34This is how we get thunderstorms in the Southern Plains, especially this time of the year.

00:38So again, there will be a strong cold front tied to this.

00:40And there's very good agreement.

00:41I'll show you a couple of computer models to show you how much they are in lockstep with

00:45one another, how likely it is that these will be strong thunderstorms in the Southern Plains.

00:50So you can see Monday, Monday night, strong thunderstorms popping into areas from Northeast

00:53Texas into the lower Mississippi Valley.

00:55And again, while we're here, before I switch over to the models, big time travel impacts

01:00here as well.

01:01You can see the red zone on Monday, the beginning of the busiest travel week of the year.

01:06Let's take a look at the flow here at around 20,000 feet, 500 millibars, so several miles

01:11up into the atmosphere.

01:12This is coming out of our California storm system.

01:15Big dip in the jet stream.

01:16It's going to be a soaking end to the week in California.

01:18Saturday, Sunday crosses the Southern Rockies, Monday, here it comes, Monday at 1 p.m.

01:24That's the GFS model over Kansas.

01:26And that's the dip in the jet stream that'll be responsible for the severe weather farther

01:30south.

01:31Just to show you how similar this is, the European coming through Southern California, the

01:36Four Corners region, Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern, noon Central, there's the dip in the jet stream

01:42in the GFS.

01:43Here's the European, pretty similar.

01:44So to no surprise, Monday afternoon, midday afternoon, GFS, thunderstorms in southern parts

01:53of the plains, and into Arkansas, and then the European.

01:57There's very good agreement here.

01:58Very good agreement here.

02:00So from Dallas east to approximately Little Rock, we got concerns there on Monday afternoon

02:04and evening.

02:05So again, that's part of the forecast that's very similar, kind of unilateral between the

02:09GFS and the European.

02:10We begin to find some differences after that, and I want to show you why.

02:15First off, let me just show you the computer models here, the explicit precipitation of

02:20rainfall forecast, and also some snow.

02:23With the GFS, you can see the main front moves east, and we begin to see the showers there

02:31moving through North Georgia.

02:34But watch what happens.

02:35Instead of that just continuing to go out to sea, things kind of hang back.

02:39And Wednesday, you can see a little bit of trouble coming into play here as that eastward

02:44progression with the backside of the front doesn't really continue east.

02:48Something else is going on here.

02:50Before we dig into that, in contrast, here's the European.

02:53There's the agreed upon time, thunderstorms Texas into Arkansas.

02:58Moving forward here, we're going to see this continue to swiftly move east with no real

03:03mystery, and out to sea.

03:05There goes the front.

03:06Dry air returns.

03:08And in the European model, that's it for the southeast.

03:11There will be some lake effect snow that follows up into the area around the Great Lakes.

03:15Pretty good flow, cold flow.

03:17Really chilly out there for Thanksgiving morning.

03:20Heavy lake effect snow for something in Michigan.

03:22And then we would see that follow into the typical snow belt locations of Pennsylvania, New

03:26York as well.

03:27Parts of Vermont.

03:28They got two feet of snow in some parts of Vermont up there, by the way, early in the season.

03:32But, so again, there's a big disparity here.

03:35Again, the GFS, that precip begins to hang back.

03:38And you could see a disturbance over northern Arkansas and up into parts of the Ohio Valley.

03:43This begins to produce rain that changes to snow.

03:46Rain that changes to snow.

03:47I do want to point out some of the deep blue.

03:50It may not be quite what you expect.

03:52This would not necessarily be heavy snow.

03:54So, this is like a six-hour precipitation forecast.

03:57And again, it'd be rain to snow because the color coding of this in the computer models,

04:05it takes the temperature, the thermal profile, the temperatures at the end of the forecast

04:11six-hour window and applies that to the whole precip for those six hours.

04:15In reality, we know it's going to be warmer.

04:17However, the rain-snow line at the beginning of that time frame is out near Columbus, Ohio.

04:22And then, again, it would get cold enough for the rain to change to snow.

04:25So, again, don't let the deep blue deceive you.

04:27It would be rain ending as snow.

04:29But then we have another system here.

04:30The southern part of this, the flow would bring another wave near the Carolina coast.

04:36That could bring some potential for a coastal storm here on Friday and into Saturday.

04:41It's just offshore, but it's lurking.

04:43Meanwhile, the European, there's none of that.

04:45The first front moves east, and it's just quiet weather for Friday and Saturday for

04:50the whole east coast.

04:51So, Saturday morning, you can see Friday afternoon and Thursday night, you can see the disparity

04:57here.

04:59Dry Wednesday night to Thursday morning versus a pretty widespread storm for the east.

05:04It's kind of a mess, and it's all because of the orientation of not the first wave, but

05:07the second trough.

05:08So, the second trough here in the GFS, it hangs it way back Wednesday afternoon into Oklahoma.

05:16You're going to see that this is way farther northeast in the Midwest than the European.

05:20So, because of the orientation of the trough being so different, we either see this Thursday,

05:26this Thanksgiving storm into early parts of the weekend linger in the northeast or not.

05:31And it all has to do with how the models are resolving that second trough, which is way,

05:36by the way, way out in eastern Russia right now.

05:39So, again, that's so far out there.

05:41It has to cross the whole North Pacific before we'll get a better handle on this trough that

05:44will impact us very differently.

05:46Whether it comes in and if it hugs the Midwest, swiftly moving up and out, that's one thing.

05:51But if it hangs back deeper south, then we're going to be dealing with, again, a very different

05:56storm system.

05:57So, the GFS does bring us kind of an interesting rain to snow scenario late in the week.

06:03And perhaps, perhaps this second coastal low could be farther east, could be farther west.

06:08There are some questions about the beginning of the weekend.

06:10But the European argues that it's not much of a big deal because it would be, again, swiftly

06:16offshore and that second trough would be flatter.

06:19What we are confident in, and again, I'm going to end with a couple of these graphics to show

06:23you travel impacts.

06:25Again, the early week storm system begins to lift through the Mississippi Valley.

06:29Less severe weather Tuesday, but still a lot of rain.

06:32Some thunderstorms, significant travel impacts.

06:34And then Wednesday, it begins to pull farther north as well.

06:37So, the Thanksgiving forecast looks a lot like this.

06:39We're probably going to have some rain, perhaps in the Mid-Atlantic, and there will be some

06:43lake effect snow.

06:44It's a big story near the Great Lakes.

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