Weather Update – Sunday January 19, 2025

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Some patchy areas of fog are greeting us this morning, along with some scattered showers. We had a few good downpours during the overnight as well. It’ll be breezy and warm ahead of a powerful cold front, which will move through this afternoon. Highs today will likely jump into the 60s ahead of the front, but don’t get used to it.

The front blasts through the area later this afternoon, and cold air comes rushing in behind it. Our temperatures drop after sunset and keep on dropping through the night, bottoming out in the lower 20s by time we wake up on Monday morning. Wind chills will be in the 10-15 range.

On Martin Luther King Jr., Day, we will be experiencing the calm before the storm, as they say. Our highs will likely only reach the middle 30s, and this will probably be the last time we’re above freezing before Thursday afternoon.

Now… the details you’re waiting for.

Honestly, I have developed a love-hate relationship with forecasting this system. The model guidance is as wishy-washy as anything I’ve ever seen. GFS insists that this is going to be a nothingburger, with little, if any, precipitation out of this event. The GFS ensembles have a whole lot of zeroes on the matrix chart. The deterministic Euro can’t make up its mind on whether it wants to do a northwest push, or slide it farther to the southeast. Every 6 hours it seems to want to flip. The Canadian had been very consistent in obliterating our area with snowfall of near-biblical proportions, but that has backed way off now as well. So once again I return to the National Blend of Models, which I have talked about ad nauseam in the blog posts all week long. As of this writing, NBM is still on board with accumulating snowfall here for Tuesday night. So we’ll go with it.

Columbus County percent chance for…

1+ inch: 60%-70%

3+ inches: 40%-50%

6+ inches: 20%-30%

If you’re a snow lover, the fact that guidance is pushing our system farther south and east is no bueno. That would also mean even colder air in place than originally expected. Temperatures go low, go low, go low.

Now, please remember that we’re talking about a storm that has yet to even develop. It’s ALL speculation at this point. Even with the best technology at our fingertips, forecasters aren’t going to be able to pin down true specifics for at least another 24-36 hours.

Depending on how the next few model runs pan out, I imagine the NWS will start with a Winter Storm Watch at some point this afternoon or this evening. From there, they will either go to a Winter Weather Advisory, or Winter Storm Warning, depending on the new data that comes in once the storm actually gets it’s life together. That timeframe will be sometime on Monday.

I have agonized over this for a few hours, whether or not to issue a “first call” snowfall map. I have drawn and deleted I think two or three iterations. I think I’m going to hold off until later this afternoon when I can get another set of model guidance in my pocket. Some forecasters might start producing maps sooner; I’d rather focus on getting it right (or at least close) than being “first.”

(Of course, the social meteorologists out there have already posted their opinions, and judging by the number of shares, that’s more “gospel” than anything an actual degreed meteorologist can come up with. But I digress.)

If I lean in the direction of the European modeling AS IT STANDS AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING, I think we’ll see at least a couple of inches of snow here Tuesday night. As one gets closer to the coast, start adding in some sleet… and the sleet mixture may push as far inland as the 701 corridor.

Any sleet will tend to reduce snow accumulations because the sleet compacts it and makes it more of a crusty ice, instead of the white, soft snow one would typically expect.

I can’t state this enough: There is the chance that we get nothing whatsoever from this. Sorry, snow lovers.

Whatever happens, it’s gone by Wednesday and we’re left with a continuation of dangerously cold temperatures. We’re not likely to pop back above freezing, as I said, until Thursday afternoon, and even THAT is starting to come into some question.

Oh, and as luck would have it, we get a second POTENTIAL round of wintry precipitation Thursday night into Friday. Guidance has really latched on to an area of low pressure developing and fairly quickly moving up the coast. This is looking like it will be close enough to the coast that freezing rain will be the result late Thursday night into early Friday. Are we looking at an ice storm? I doubt it, but it’s something that needs to be watched.

If we DO get snow here Tuesday night, there won’t be much, if any, melting during the day Wednesday, even with full sunshine. Lows tumbling into the 10- to 15-degree range Wednesday night means anything “wet” becomes dangerously icy… secondary roads across the county could be a mess.

We MIGHT get above freezing Thursday, but then the freezing rain Thursday night just makes things even worse.

Ok, I’ve rambled on long enough. Thank you for bearing with me on this. Please be careful with the information you see on social media. There are a *LOT* of people trying to get clicks. If there’s not someone’s name behind it, best to probably keep on scrolling. Trust local degreed meteorologists.

Thanks for reading, have a wonderful Sunday, and take care.

~Meteorologist Christopher Cawley