A winter storm with widespread impacts from New Mexico to New England is likely to cause massive travel disruptions and extreme numbers of power outages from Jan. 25.
00:00We are increasingly and increasingly concerned day after day as confidence grows about what will probably become the storm that defines the entire winter.
00:12And it may be a storm that many remember for many decades that will develop Friday, Saturday, and Sunday across parts of the Southern Plains, much of the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and it will also impact the Northeast with significant snow in some areas as well.
00:27So we want to get into the specifics here, some of the mechanics behind the storm and what are we confident in, what are some of the questions that remain at this point.
00:34So we'll look at the models and we'll also look at the general storm overview here as we kind of summarize our expectations at this point.
00:42So just off the bat, here is our big picture, kind of an early look at Friday through Saturday morning as the storm begins to take over here in the Southern Plains.
00:54So this is kind of the starting block for our storm.
00:57It's going to be a marathon of a storm.
01:00We're expecting to see significant ice in parts of Texas and widespread significant snow into areas around Oklahoma and northern Arkansas.
01:09And we're very concerned about just a tremendous amount of sleet and freezing rain.
01:14The freezing rain, the southern half of the ice zone, is going to be a huge problem and maybe even into Austin as well.
01:21But Atlanta is in this conversation too and up into parts of northern Alabama.
01:28Freezing rain glazes the surface of the power lines, the tree limbs.
01:32It's going to bring many people to a point of no power, no electricity as we're dealing with a major ice storm.
01:40Ice storms are tough because they're so widespread as opposed to individual maybe convective thunderstorms that produce narrow paths of power outages.
01:49When you have many states or multiple areas the size of multiple states without power in many areas, hundreds of thousands per state, if not millions per state without power.
02:00There's just such a huge volume of power lines to repair and the outages continue for long periods of time.
02:07And it's going to be really cold.
02:08Then in the northeast, we're expecting to see snow reach many areas along and even north of I-81, I-95, potentially as far north as I-90 there and beyond into New England.
02:19So let's look at the models here.
02:20What's behind all this?
02:22Why are we producing a forecast with such a widespread, high-impact southern storm?
02:26Well, we're dealing with, number one, very cold air that's in place, and it's going to be kind of reinvigorated with a new Arctic front that's going to produce more chilling down into the south.
02:40You're going to have temperatures around 50 during late Tuesday night, Wednesday morning in Dallas, but you're going to be below that for daytime weather on Friday.
02:48And overall, a couple of players on the field here.
02:51We've got a strong zone of low pressure southwest of California.
02:55We have a huge lobe of low pressure with, again, disturbances rotating around the base of this through parts of the eastern and central U.S. here.
03:08This area of low pressure in the southwest is going to provide lift.
03:11We've got moisture from the gulf, and the low levels is going to be flowing north.
03:15So a lot of different players are on the field here to produce big problems.
03:20And as this southwestern disturbance moves east, that's going to enhance the lift, and you can even see some jet stream energy even as far east as Tennessee tied to this as a disturbance rotates through the base of that trough.
03:32So we're going to see a prolonged period of time in which we're going to have a lot of rising motion across the south.
03:40When we look at the humidity levels, this is technically precipitable water.
03:44The moisture content in the vertical column of the atmosphere from the ground all the way up to the top of the troposphere.
03:50And we have plenty of moisture here near the gulf.
03:53And you can see the low level, technically these are winds at 850 millibars, about a mile up into the atmosphere, flow out of the south and south-southwest at those altitudes.
04:04And, again, a truly arctic front pressing south with those strong winds behind this, driving that cold air all the way down to the gulf.
04:15So we've got the lift coming in from that southwestern storm.
04:18We've got the moisture surging north, and we have, again, a strong arctic front just plowing south with ridiculously cold air into the upper midwest with, again, tremendously cold air in place here, the coldest air of the season.
04:32It's been a cold winter at times.
04:34This is going to be colder than anything we've experienced yet up there in the midwest and across the interior northeast.
04:39So here we go into Friday.
04:41And you can begin to see initially rain even up into Sherman, Texas Friday morning.
04:45But look at this as the cold press continues to drive south.
04:51We're going to be seeing a changeover from rain to ice and ice to snow into more and more of Texas.
04:57So in the pink zone here, that is a forecast of freezing rain.
05:00In that peach color, we're looking at sleet.
05:02And then in the blue zone, we're looking at snow.
05:05And this is Friday, Friday evening.
05:08That's the GFS.
05:10Here is the European.
05:11There's, unfortunately, good agreement here.
05:14And then here is the Canadian model.
05:15Now, this is not color-coded the same, but the critical thickness levels here, that little 540 thickness line, that's a sign.
05:23The cold air is present here as well.
05:25The precipice is present as well in the Canadian model.
05:28So we're going to be dealing with the same setup here.
05:31Saturday, this expands east.
05:33There's a chunk of energy that drives moisture east, and extra lift occurs across the east.
05:38Meanwhile, we still have that southwestern storm producing lift all the way west into New Mexico.
05:43So look at this area from Flagstaff, Arizona to Dare County, North Carolina, and the Outer Banks with a continuous stripe of snow.
05:51So that's going to be a huge, huge, huge storyline.
05:55Now, if there is, we need to keep an eye on the way that this extra piece of energy digs south into the Midwest here Saturday into Sunday, and even before then.
06:05Depending on how that digs south across the plains, there's going to be this inflection point.
06:09Does that allow the storm to buckle north all the way to Boston, or does it keep it a little suppressed south of I-80?
06:16My suspicion is we will see snow in Boston and in Scranton and in Binghamton, and certainly into Philadelphia and New York as well.
06:24A quick look at snow amounts.
06:25Now, a lot of this, keep in mind the GFS, I don't think we're going to see 18 inches of snow in southern Arkansas.
06:30There's going to be a lot of sleep mixed in there.
06:31But here's a pretty reasonable look here at the European.
06:33European, heavy snow, we may see over a foot in some parts of the south with this one, and the Canadian says the same.
06:40But also the freezing rain, look at that freezing rain.
06:43This could be a major ice storm with days and days of outages for some.
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