Despite the warmer weather another winter storm is on the way!

The January thaw is underway as temperatures will finally crack the freezing mark for much of the lower 48 states by mid week. Below is the high temperatures map forecasted by the GFS on Thursday afternoon.

Besides the nice warm up a significant winter storm is on the way to traverse the southern United States and up the East coast. A strong upper level storm will start to develop as it crashes into the desert southwest and into southwest Texas by mid week. This will help develop an area of low pressure just off the Gulf coast of Texas by Thursday night. Developing rain all across the east parts of Texas into Louisiana. By Friday the rain spreads further north and as the upper level matures and cools. The rain will change to snow across portions of the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and parts of Northern Texas by Saturday morning. The low pressure path based on how I interpret the upper level pattern across North America and the latest ensemble packages will start in south Texas. Then head east into the northern Gulf then northeast up the west side of the Appalachian Mountains. A transfer of energy will likely occur from the original low pressure in eastern Kentucky to a new low pressure off the North Carolina coast. This will likely be a heavy precipitation maker with a strip of heavy snows on the north side. The bitterly cold temperatures and strong winds will likely be missing so I’m not expecting blizzard conditions. Right now accumulating snows will likely break out from around Amarillo and Abilene then run northeast into parts of Oklahoma and far northern Texas into Arkansas on Friday. The snow will likely become a little heavier and a little more widespread across parts of the Ohio and north Tennessee Valley by Saturday. This will eventually head into the Mid-Atlantic and probably interior northeast west of I-95 by late weekend.

Now this is just a rough outline of a possible storm system that is over 5 days from even starting to develop. So there are still tons of questions about the upcoming storm system. However after looking at the pattern and ensembles I’m pretty confident about a significant storm coming out of the Gulf by late week. This could put down greater then 6 inches of snow in Ohio Valley and into the interior northeast by the weekend.

I’ll have more as the week goes on.

Have a great Sunday! Justin