Yuck
Quote:
The coming weekend's wintry weather system is garnering a good deal of interest and attention. It's being monitored closely by the Chicago weather forecast community, amateurs and professionals alike.
With this weekend's system still days away, MANY questions remain on how this storm will move and where it will produce its precip and the form its precipitation will take. The truth is, it's far too early for the forecasts to have any sort of accuracy. We can, however, identify at this point the area in which chances for wintry weather are elevated. Chicago is indeed directly in the path, and at the moment, most models seem to favor more snow hitting the northern and western part of the state. This certainly is subject to change. That said, a few degrees fluctuation in temperature, or a slight change in wind speed/direction might be the different between 4" of snow, 8" of snow, 1" of rain, 0.25" of ice, or some combination thereof. Over the next 24-48 hours, we should continue to get more information from atmospheric readings and computer models, but even then, any accumulation predictions will be an estimate at best.
At this early hour, it does seem likely that the rain/snow demarcation line will be extreme. For example, one model run showed the far north western suburbs of the Hampshire and Huntley areas getting 8"-10" of snow, yet had southeastern suburbs like South Holland and Crete receiving 1.22" of rain. If the storm tracks further south, colder air will fill in on the backside of the storm making most or all of the precip the Chicago area sees snow. On the flip side should the storm track further north, the rain/snow line could be moved further west towards Rockford, with the Chicago metro area seeing more rain and/or freezing rain than anything else.
This is a lot of words and a bit of industry jargon to say, quite simply, that 'We know we're getting something this weekend. But we don't know exactly what just yet. We also can't say exactly where this will occur.'
If you are curious as to the "when", the bottom line is that the weather from late Friday afternoon and into Friday evening, thru most of the day and night Saturday, and even into the early hours of Sunday morning appears to be accurately described as unsettled at best, and very, very wintry at worst. Travelers using the roads on Saturday should exercise extreme caution, and those who are flying had better pack some extra patience.
There are also model hints of a weak system blowing through here Sunday night into Monday morning. This does not appear to be anything more than a nuisance in terms of precipitation, but may well affect the Monday morning commute.
_________________
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
It's more fun to be a victim
Caller Bob wrote:
There will never be an effective vaccine. I'll never get one anyway.
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