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

Breaking ice in buckets is something I thought I left in Kentucky

What are we looking at here?

Y'all go ahead and plan for your kids to be home on Friday. And maybe Thursday too, out of an abundance of caution.

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Damn. December was so warm I was thinking we were gonna have a mild winter.

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You must be new to the south

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Y'all go ahead and plan for your kids to be home on Friday. And maybe Thursday too, out of an abundance of caution.

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Done.

Lots of text from Nick Mikulas:

This is all just a mess. There are still a couple opportunities for frozen precipitation, and even a low end severe threat in the next 5-6 days, but I’m less confident than I was yesterday on the frozen stuff. You want to gain confidence in an outcome as you get closer to an event, and that is not happening.
I’ll start with the severe threat since it’s first, and that makes sense. Showers and thunderstorms will form along the cold front that will reintroduce some winter to the area. Arctic cold fronts aren’t a great set up for severe weather in our area, but in this case, decent wind shear, and enough instability could bring a few severe storms Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. SPC has us in a marginal, level 1 of 5 risk for severe weather, and as we learned a week ago, a marginal risk can produce problems. So don’t ignore it, but the threat won’t be widespread.
Behind this front, there are a couple of pieces of energy. These were the ones that were near Alaska and Hawaii yesterday. Models are getting away from the idea of phasing these two systems, and creating one system, and gravitating more toward two systems that would might have a little less potential to produce wintry weather in our area. All is not lost winter fans. Read on. The most interesting one would be Thursday night into early Friday. It appears that precipitation will develop over southern and central Texas and start to stream toward our area. A strong Arctic high pressure to our north will be pushing dry, cold air this way, as moisture tries to ride over the top of the cold air. As usual, it’s quite the tightrope walk around here as too much dry air means no precipitation, and too much moisture means that there won’t be enough evaporative cooling, and we will see all rain. The crazy thing about this system is that the cold air looks plenty strong Thursday night into early Friday. Maybe too strong. If we get too much of a push south on that cold air, the frozen stuff may stay down south along I-10 giving us that rare event here in Central Louisiana where we are too far north! For now, I’m thinking snow is off the table. It looks like freezing rain or sleet if we get something Thursday night into Friday. Right now, I’d say there is a 30-40% chance of that, which is a little more optimistic than ensembles. I always side with these models driving the colder, drier air too far south down this way in a set up like this. Many times, that moisture coming in from the south will win. The best chance for any sort of light freezing rain or sleet would likely be north of I-10, and south of a line from Many to Jena, to Waterproof LA. This doesn’t feel like a huge event, but if it materializes, could cause some slick roads. Don’t alter plans yet, but check back tomorrow.
Beyond this, the second piece of energy will be even more fickle. It’s stronger, but models show that moving our way sometime between Saturday and Monday. I know less about what will happen with that than I know about why my daughter makes the same face in every picture she sends her friends, but I’m watching it. The range of outcomes is all over the place, but it only seems like a low chance of any sort of winter stuff. I will keep you as up to date as I am!

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Not doubting you but how can you be so sure?

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Because after about 2,000 feet or so up, it’s gonna be well above freezing. No time for it to turn into snow but plenty of time to turn into sleet or just simply freeze on contact. It’s an almost identical atmospheric setup as last year.

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Because after about 2,000 feet or so up, it’s gonna be well above freezing. No time for it to turn into snow but plenty of time to turn into sleet or just simply freeze on contact. It’s an almost identical atmospheric setup as last year.

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Gotcha, could that set up change? It just seems that in this area anytime we have potential winter weather the predictions never hold up one way or the other. Is this just a coincidence the last few years or is it just our area with the gulf and other things factoring in?

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at least Friday temps will be well above freezing.

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Using the NAM model posted above verbatim, I wouldn't be so sure. It only briefly runs temps across South LA to around 34-35 for a small window of time.