re: Snow Tease for Baton Rouge (Saturday) UPDATE (1/20)

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Snowpocalypse?

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Meteorologist Nick Mikulas
This feels like the first in a series of posts that come to crush winter dreams. On the good side, this wasn’t going to be a snow event. The threat is/was ice. Chances are dropping a bit locally, but a threat continues, especially south of Alexandria. Which is weird. There’s also that severe threat coming in Wednesday afternoon into Wednesday night. We’ll start with that, since that is our main issue right now.

SPC has kept us in a marginal risk for severe weather, which totally makes sense. The instability is pretty low due to low level moisture not being very deep. The wind shear is quite respectable, so it’s good that we don’t have a ton of moisture streaming in. That being said, a few supercells could form between 5:00 and 8:00 PM on Wednesday. These could become severe, and all modes of severe weather would be possible, including a tornado or two. Again, as we saw with the Hornbeck and Peason tornadoes, it only takes one wild cell to cause problems. After the initial cells form, a line will intensify behind those cells, and sweep through the area between 8:00 PM and 3:00 AM. I’ll be on radar duty tomorrow evening for sure.

On the winter side of things, cold air will come in quickly, and with gusto on Thursday. Temperatures will hang out in the 30s, and wind will gust into the low 20s. That means wind chills in the teens and 20s. Some models try and squeeze out a few sleet pellets behind the cold front Thursday morning. That would be very light, and no issue. The timeframe I’m still watching is Thursday evening into early Friday morning. Most ensembles have shifted to the south with the threat, though not all. The European and Canadian ensembles have gone south, while the GFS ensembles and SREF models have held a threat in our area. The GFS ensembles may have even nudged just a hair to the north. That being said, the GFS was pretty far south to begin with. So a chance for wintry stuff remains, especially south of a Fort Polk to Alexandria to Marksville line. I’d say it’s possible, and when I say possible I mean 10% chance, south of a Many to Jena to Waterproof line. I’m clarifying that in case you get some sleet in Hodge and want to come back and throw tomatoes at me. I don’t speak in absolutes. Anything is “possible”, but when I say it’s possible, I mean possible to a reasonable degree. This would be an all freezing rain and sleet event, and high resolution models indicate a decent threat for some accumulating freezing rain south of a Dequincy to Kinder to Opelousas line. There are a lot of lines I’m mentioning. I’m still sorting out my streaming stuff, but after that, I’m going to find a program where I can draw lines and make pretty weather pictures. The response to the subscription that literally gets you the same thing you’d get for free has been awesome, so I will most certainly be beefing up my “weather center” in the coming weeks as we transition into severe weather season. I should be able to lock the winter side of this forecast down pretty well by this time tomorrow.

Beyond this, any other threat isn’t really worth posting about. The chances are low, and I’ll revisit should I see something worth talking about. For now, let’s first get through our low end severe threat, and this potential winter system that ranges from not much in our northern parishes, to the potential for accumulating freezing rain in our southern parishes. So maybe this isn’t the winter dream crushing post I thought it was. But with it being ice, I’m guessing many would be fine with this one going away.

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NAM ice is a bit scary...

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Any of this suppose to hit Houston?

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