We have a full slate this week, but despite that, we won’t be covering much of the country. Look how short these three road trips are!
Sunday – Road Trip from Morgantown, West Virginia to Louisville, Kentucky
Monday – Road Trip from Louisville to Knoxville, Tennessee
Wednesday – Gainesville, Georgia
Thursday – Road Trip from Gainesville to Huntsville, Alabama
Friday – Panama City, Florida
Saturday – Parkersburg, West Virginia
We head west the capital of Washington for today’s long distance forecast. Well, I guess the forecast isn’t long distance, just the forecast location.
At 838AM, PT, Olympia was reporting a temperature of 48 degrees with overcast skies and a little bit of fog near the surface. Despite the gloomy conditions at present, the Pacific Northwest is under a ridge which should allow for the low overcast to burn off this afternoon, and for sunny skies to arrive for the afternoon.
The ridge across the region is driving the latest wave along the semi-permanent low over the Gulf of Alaska northwards to the Alaska Panhandle. Southerly flow and mostly clear skies will be possible through the morning, but the related cold front associated with the aforementioned wave will move inland shortly after noon. It is expected to carry with it quite a bit of heavy precipitation, and torrential rain will fall through Sunday morning before beginning to taper off after sunrise. The environment will still be muggy and cloudy, however, as postfrontal westerlies won’t allow much clearing through the end of the day. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to see drizzle throughout the afternoon on Sunday.
Tomorrow – Starting sunny, then heavy rain through the afternoon, High 52, Low 38
Sunday – Heavy rain early, tapering off becoming overcast and drizzly, High 55, Low 45
TWC: Tomorrow – PM Rain High 56, Low 39
Sunday – Rain High 57, Low 49
AW: Tomorrow – Cloudy with rain in the afternoon High 55, Low 36
Sunday – Mostly cloudy with a couple of showers High 56, Low 46
NWS: Tomorrow – Rain, mainly after 10am High 56, Low 39
Sunday – Showers. High 56, Low 49
WB: Tomorrow – Mostly cloudy with a chance of rain in the morning… Then rain likely in the afternoon. High 56, Low 44
Sunday – Showers. High 56, Low 49
WN: Tomorrow – Scattered Showers High 55, Low 39
Sunday – Showers High 55, Low 48
Rain in Western Washington. All of your stereotypes are confirmed! The milky clouds over western Washington reflect the low clouds and fog in the area right now.
There has been a tornado warning related to a waterspout up by St. Petersburg, but frankly, looking at the radar, I’m not really worries about a waterspout here or there. No, I’m worried about that red “7″ shaped band of thunderstorms headed towards the southwest coast of Florida. Naples and Everglades could easily see winds of 70-80mph. The winds will be stronger and more widespread than any waterspout will be. So yeah, heed the tornado watch, but just know that it’s not the tornadoes that will be the biggest issue.
Perhaps because of how badly Atlanta and Birmingham coped with a winter storm early this year, and subsequently Charlotte saw similar concerns a few weeks later, we don’t bat an eye when nasty weather arrives in places that aren’t prepared for it.
How much have you heard about the sleet storm in the Memphis area earlier this week? I subscribe to Memphis news outlets and all manner of meteorologists, both national and regional. I knew that parts of eastern and northern Arkansas saw a whopping 5 inches of sleet, but I hadn’t heard much about the effects of all that sleet.
Well, you can see above, traffic was at a standstill. And this isn’t a photo from Memphis, it’s from Blytheville, Arkansas, which is on I-55 on the Missouri border. I-55 was backed up from Memphis to Missouri, and a stretch of I-40 was backed up by 100 miles west into Arkansas. At least in Arkansas, residents were trapped within the confines of a major metropolitan area. On the other hand, with sleet, temperatures tend to be a bit warmer, so that’s a little bit of good news.
The sleet was brought out as a weak area of low pressure moving out of Texas, right along the southern edge of another bout of Arctic high pressure. The cold air was entrenched at the surface, but warm air filtered in aloft. Fortunately, the warm layer was fairly thin, and falling snow didn’t fully melt through the atmosphere. Hopefully, there isn’t much more sleet or ice through the month of March.
Today we embark on a 1-day Midwestern roadtrip, from Central WI to Northern IN. It’s 440 miles from Wausau to Kokomo. Will it be as warm as the Beach Boys lead us to believe? Given the winter we’ve had, it might be a stretch, but maybe we’ll get lucky!
A mid-level disturbance will be working through the area during the morning, dropping accumulating snows from southern MN/northern IA through southern WI/northern IL. Wausau will only be seeing a few flakes when we depart south in the morning, but as we continue to make our way through Madison, we’ll see the snow totals pick up. Luckily, as we make it to the WI/IL border, most of the heavier snow will have tapered off, but roads will probably still be fairly slick with a bit of accumulated snow on them. Light snow will continue throughout the afternoon hours as we make our way through northeastern IL and around Chicago, so hopefully there aren’t too many accidents impeding out progress. The light snow will continue to linger in the evening as we make our way into northern Indiana and ultimately to Kokomo, so hopefully you’re a fan of watching snow fall!
This winter has been interminable. Another cold snowy month provided quite a bit of weather to enjoy and experience, and certainly made for some interesting forecasts. We added WeatherNation and saw that they had a few issues getting their forecast across in a way that reflected the way the weather was actually behaving. Most months don’t usually have this many non standard days, but in February 2014, it was the name of the game. Victoria-Weather played the game the best in February, and after a rough month of January, we won February.
As I watched the weather in the ArkLaTex over the last couple of days, I was convinced that we were in for an epic forecast bust in Texarkana. There was a little bit of drizzle on Saturday, with clouds throughout the day that seemed primed to derail temperature forecasts. Then, yesterday cold air barreled into the region with much more fervor than anyone really expected. There was sleet reported all over the place in Arkansas. On the opposite side of the state, there were reports of a half foot of sleet. In Texarkana, though, the temperatures didn’t drop far enough while it was precipitating either at the surface or aloft for mixed precipitation. They did see temperatures drop off dramatically by the end of the day, and this was certainly the biggest issues with forecasts across the board, but with so many potential problems with this particular forecast, it was a pretty impressive result for the forecasts to be as good as they were. Accuweather had the top forecast for the stormy city.
Actuals: Saturday – .01 inches of rain, High 73, Low 46
Sunday – 1.31 inches of rain in thunderstorms, High 67, Low 33
Grade: C
All right, a road trip! The trip from western Pennsylvania to southern Mississippi is a 2 day trip in perfect conditions. We will not be travelling in perfect conditions, however, and instead, it looks like a bit of a travel nightmare. The mileage will be 1061 miles, and in those idyllic conditions, that means an average rate of speed of 63.3mph. Our goal for Monday night will be to cover about 500 miles. Let’s hit the road. The icy, horrible road.
DAY ONE
Things are going to go sidewise pretty quickly tomorrow as we start out from Johnstown. Snow will begin as we arrive in West Virginia and will become remarkably heavy by the time we reach Clarksburg. We will definitely be slowed through the state of West Virginia, but if we can continue through the state at the pace we estimated earlier, we will be out of the snow in a matter of about 3 hours, as snow will be steadily pulling eastward Fortunately, we will not encounter any of the freezing rain or sleet that will make the system memorable. Really, though, with temperatures below freezing even through Thorngrove, Tennessee, the day one destination, roads will be slick thanks to the fresh precipitation and the ice received overnight in eastern Tennessee. Maybe better luck on Tuesday?
DAY TWO
Well, our luck WILL be better as we head out of Thorngrove, which is north of Knoxville. Temperatures will be warmer so the roads will be passable, and there won’t be any fresh precipitation falling. Not until about Birmingham, anyways. There will be some Gulf moisture working north, and we could see some low clouds and some spots of drizzle from Birmingham south to Mobile. By the time we get there, heavier rain will be arriving ashore, and the stretch from Mobile to Pascagoula will probably be a bit wetter than we would like. We will be dodging rain drops when we descend upon Pascagoula.
They did it! A full month in, and WeatherNation has its first victory, topping all competitors in Albany. They were one of only 4 outlets to properly forecast snow in the New York capital (they saw a trace before sunrise on Friday) but that wasn’t what put them over the edge. They also managed to generate the best temperature forecast, erring only on one time (the Friday low) and only then by 2 degrees. Congratulations, WeatherNation. We’ll see if this is a trend.
Actuals: Friday – Trace of snow, High 18, Low 3
Saturday – High 32, Low 1
Grade: A
Now that the calendar has flipped over to March, we can put meteorological Winter behind us and enjoy the kickoff for meteorological Spring! Warm weather! Flowers blooming! Thunderstorms instead of snowstorms! Well, it seems the weather is playing yet another cruel joke on us. Wind Chill Watches and Warnings cover the entirety of the Northern Plains and most of the Upper Midwest. A swath of Winter Storm Watches and Warnings cover the center of the country from the OK/TX Panhandles eastward to the Mid-Atlantic Coast, with an ice storm expected to break out from northern AR eastward through KY and into the Virginias.
I guess that stupid groundhog was right. Spring won’t be here for a while.