00:00We are increasingly and increasingly concerned, day after day, as confidence grows, about what
00:12will probably become the storm that defines the entire winter. And it may be a storm that many
00:19remember for many decades that will develop Friday, Saturday, and Sunday across parts of
00:24the Southern Plains, much of the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and it will also impact the Northeast
00:29with significant snow in some areas as well. So we want to get into the specifics here,
00:34some of the mechanics behind the storm and what are we confident in, what are some of
00:38the questions that remain at this point. So we'll look at the models and we'll also look
00:41at the general storm overview here as we kind of summarize our expectations at this point.
00:48So just off the bat, here is our big picture, kind of an early look at Friday through Saturday
00:54morning as the storm begins to take over here in the Southern Plains. So this is kind of
01:01the starting block for our storm. It's going to be a marathon of a storm. We're expecting
01:06to see significant ice in parts of Texas and widespread significant snow into areas around
01:13Oklahoma and Northern Arkansas. And we're very concerned about just tremendous amount of sleet
01:18and freezing rain. The freezing rain, the Southern half of the ice zone, is going to be a huge
01:25problem, and maybe even into Austin as well. But Atlanta is in this conversation too, and
01:30up into parts of Northern Alabama. Freezing rain glazes the surface of the power lines, the
01:37tree limbs. It's going to bring many people to a point of no power, no electricity, as we're
01:44dealing with a major ice storm. Ice storms are tough because they're so widespread as opposed
01:49to individual, maybe convective thunderstorms that produce narrow paths of power outages.
01:55When you have many states or multiple areas the size of multiple states without power in
02:01many areas, hundreds of thousands per state, if not millions per state without power, there's
02:05just such a huge volume of power lines to repair, and the outages continue for a long period
02:11of time. And it's going to be really cold. Then in the Northeast, we're expecting to see
02:16snow reach many areas along and even north of I-81, I-95, potentially as far north as I-90
02:23there and beyond into New England. So let's look at the models here. What's behind all this?
02:27Why are we producing a forecast with such a widespread, high-impact Southern storm? Well,
02:33we're dealing with number one, very cold air that's in place, and it's going to be kind
02:39of reinvigorated with a new Arctic front that's going to produce more chilling down into the south.
02:45You're going to have temperatures around 50 during late Tuesday night, Wednesday morning in Dallas,
02:50but you're going to be below that for daytime weather on Friday. And overall, a couple of
02:55players on the field here. We've got a strong zone of low pressure southwest of California. We have a
03:02huge lobe of low pressure with, again, disturbances rotating around the base of this through parts
03:09of the eastern and central U.S. here. This area of low pressure in the southwest is going to provide
03:16lift. We've got moisture from the Gulf, and the low levels is going to be flowing north. So a lot of
03:22different players are on the field here to produce big problems. And as this southwestern disturbance moves
03:28east east, that's going to enhance the lift. And you can even see some jet stream energy even as far
03:33east as Tennessee tied to this as a disturbance rotates through the base of that trough. So we're
03:38going to see a prolonged period of time in which we're going to have a lot of rising motion across
03:45the south. When we look at the humidity levels, this is technically precipitable water. The moisture
03:50content in the vertical column of the atmosphere from the ground all the way up to the top of the
03:55troposphere. And we have plenty of moisture here near the Gulf. And you can see the low level,
04:01technically these are winds at 850 millibars about a mile up into the atmosphere,
04:05flow out of the south and south-southwest at those altitudes. And again, a truly arctic front
04:12pressing south with those strong winds behind this, driving that cold air all the way down to the Gulf.
04:20So we've got the lift coming in from that southwestern storm. We've got the moisture
04:24surging north. And we have, again, a strong arctic front just plowing south with ridiculously cold air
04:32into the upper midwest with, again, tremendously cold air in place here. The coldest air of the season.
04:38It's been a cold winter at times. This is going to be colder than anything we've experienced yet
04:41up there in the midwest and across the interior northeast. So here we go into Friday. And you can begin
04:47to see initially rain, even up into Sherman, Texas, Friday morning. But look at this as the cold press
04:54continues to drive south. We're going to be seeing a changeover from rain to ice and ice to snow into
05:01more and more of Texas. So in the pink zone here, that is a forecast of freezing rain. In that peach
05:06color, we're looking at sleet. And then in the blue zone, we're looking at snow. And this is Friday,
05:11Friday evening. That's the GFS. Here is the European. There's unfortunately good agreement
05:18here. And then here is the Canadian model. Now this is not color coded the same, but
05:23the critical thickness levels here, that little 540 thickness line, that's a sign the cold air is
05:30present here as well. The precipice is present as well in the Canadian model. So we're going to be
05:34dealing with the same setup here. Saturday, this expands east. There's a chunk of energy that drives
05:41moisture east and extra lift occurs across the east. Meanwhile, we still have that southwestern storm
05:46producing lift all the way west into New Mexico. So look at this area from Flagstaff, Arizona to
05:53Dare County, North Carolina in the Outer Banks with a continuous stripe of snow. That's going to be a huge,
05:59huge storyline. Now, if there is, we need to keep an eye on the way that this extra piece of energy digs
06:06south into the Midwest here, Saturday into Sunday, and even before then. Depending on how that digs
06:11south across the plains, there's going to be this inflection point. Does that allow the storm to buckle
06:17north all the way to Boston? Or does it keep it a little suppressed south of I-80? My suspicion is we
06:23will see snow in Boston and in Scranton and in Binghamton, and certainly into Philadelphia and New York
06:28as well. A quick look at snow amounts. Now, a lot of this, keep in mind the GFS, I don't think we're going to
06:33see 18 inches of snow in southern Arkansas. There's going to be a lot of sleet mixed in there,
06:37but here's a pretty reasonable look here at the European. Heavy snow. We may see over a foot in
06:41some parts of the south with this one, and the Canadian says the same, but also the freezing rain.
06:48Look at that freezing rain. This could be a major ice storm with days and days of outages
06:53for some. That's your forecast feed for now.
