Rain Sleet and Snow coming to Alabama and Georgia March 21-22 2013

A chance for wintery weather in the deep south will be coming in Thursday night into Friday morning. Get your cameras ready haha.

Best area for accumulation will be in the norther areas of Alabama and Georgia. There is likely to be no accumulation except on elevated and grassy areas in the central areas of both states as surface temperatures will be to warm.

In areas it will begin as a rain sleet mix and may change to snow briefly. In others areas it may begin as a sleet snow mix and change to all snow. Best time of this, from west to east will be between 3 AM and 10 Am Friday morning.

#Snow Georgia / Alabama Saturday February 16 2013 #gawx #alwx

As I have been mentioning most of this week on my Facebook page [ www.facebook.com/CataulaGeorgiaWeather ], there may be snow in the area. This morning my thinking has not changed. In FACT .. the National Weather Service in Peachtree city is now coming on board toward my thinking from past days. They at this time, 5 AM EST Friday February 15 2013 mention a bullseye of Snow of OVER 1 inch, south of Columbus by 1 PM EST Saturday afternoon. They also say less than 1 inch for areas between Atlanta and Columbus around 10 AM EST Saturday Morning. Timing and placement of this is not exact, so I will be monitoring things to narrow it down and posting it on Facebook and tweeting [ twitter.com/cataulagawx ] it when it snows at my location.. Right now I would say between 6 AM and 12 PM Saturday.

As mentioned above and from looking at data, there is indeed a sweet spot or bullseye in central Georgia. Columbus looks to get around 1 inch, and Macon about 2 inches if numerical data from the NAM-06z run is correct.

Athens Georgia should get under 1 inch and Atlanta just over a Tenth of an inch. There isn’t much to go around but there could be more or less depending on how things set up and where. It remains to be seen if snow will accumulate on the ground, it will on cars and other surfaces.

Here’s a few images showing 06z NAM profiles and Skew-t’s for Columbus, Macon, Athens and Atlanta Georgia.

I first mentiond this on Facebook, on February 8 2013 and on this blog February 11 2013 here Possible Snow for Georgia and Alabama February 16/17

Possible #Snow for #Georgia and #Alabama February 16/17 – #gawx #alwx

At this time models show the potential yet again for snow in the south. Looking at things, this is the best I’ve seen since winter began. Depending on where the Low pressure develops and where it tracks will have a lot to say in this. With that said, this is not a forecast yet, but only an outlook. ‘Right now’ it looks like central Alabama and Georgia will see more in the way of snow than areas to the north. Totals range from a dusting to a Half inch in northern areas to an Inch and a half for central areas. Even as far south as Valdosta GA could see about an inch and Mobile Al seeing a dusting.

Here is one of the tools I use to help me figure out what is going on with the weather, whether it be severe storms or winter weather. As simply as I can explain, here’s what I see for winter weather this weekend that I mentioned last week. For those that don’t care to read all this, at this time models are back on track showing snow in and around our area this coming weekend February 16/17.

SOUNDING/SKEW-T

Red Shows Temperature
Green Shows dewpoint
Yellow shows area of Snow Growth
Blue shows Icing

The scale across the bottom is the temperature scale in Celsius. The 0 [zero] is 32F or freezing. What all this shows is, If there were moisture available during the time shown, in this case around 6 PM Saturday, it would likely fall as Snow. Models do show moisture being available during this time, at this time.

So, what the current GFS sounding is showing is Rain beginning around 12 PM Saturday, changing to Snow around 6 PM Saturday and continuing until about 9 PM. Total accumulation for the local area at this time is about 1 and a half inches at a 10 to 1 ratio , which means for every inch of liquid water, there would be 10 inches of snow. So there’s not much here, but hopefully enough to give us a little snow.

 
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