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• Timing appears to be late Tuesday through Wednesday at sunrise.
• Most likely time for severe weather is 8PM-Midnight
• Main severe weather threat is WIND. Hail to a lesser degree and tornadoes. 
• Tornadoes are possible and tornado watches are expected.
• Heavy rain is also possible. Most places get 1-2" of rain, some places 3-4"
• Threat includes everyone. No specific area in Region 8. 

As I mentioned Monday on the blog, there is a chance of a light wintry mix tomorrow night across Region 8. Let's first make this really simple by posting some bullet points about the event to avoid any confusion about the current thinking:

1. Timing looks to be after dark on Thursday Night through Friday morning.
2. This event looks light, but it does not take much to make the roads slick.
3. This does NOT look like a snow event, but rather a sleet and freezing rain event.
4. This does NOT look like a major storm that knocks out power to thousands.
5. This is NOTHING like the Ice Storm of 2009. I repeat, nothing like it. Much, much smaller.
6. I'm not a superintendent, so I don't know if you will have school on Friday!

It's still early, but Thursday needs to be watched for parts of Region 8. The models are not agreeing too well, so we have to weigh out which model has done well this winter and which has not done well. There is a model we use called the NAM. Typically, it's not too shabby. this winter, it has been a dumpster fire. Other models include the GFS, Euro, and a few others we use from time to time. The Euro has done very well in short-range and mid-range forecasting. Both the Euro and GFS agree on the overall setup for Thursday night, but the Euro is a little colder at the surface. Let's first take a look at what the Euro thinks about temperatures early Friday morning. Click image to enlarge:

I checked my voicemail this evening and I had twelve messages. I was a little surprised that I did not have more considering we had sleet, snow, and freezing rain today. To my surprise, none of them were mean or negative! It made me very happy to call Region 8 home! :)

Now, let me first say that the forecast was off a little, but it was not a completely busted forecast. Last week, the data hinted at the chance of Wintry Weather for Today. In fact here is a blog post that I typed up LAST Wednesday:

Blog post from January 9th.

In that blog post, I mentioned that we could have Sleet or Ice today. As time went on, it started to look like the storm would barely clip us to the South. Even this morning, the NWS only had 4 counties in Region 8 under a Winter Weather Advisory and they are the 4 most southeast counties in our viewing area.

Once the sleet started to cover the streets in Little Rock around 9:30 am, I started to get concerned. Even though we had relatively dry air in place across Region 8, the precipitation continued its northward push. As I mentioned at the 5:00 Newscast, sometimes we forecast...and God laughs. I can humbly say that on behalf of the team, we're sorry if the sleet and snow caught you off guard today.

In recent years, we have had a great record on forecasting winter weather and severe weather. There will be times when we miss the forecast and I feel this was one of those times.

Back on the horse now! This stuff will melt away tomorrow and  we'll learn from this little wintry event and be more prepared next time.

Have a good night,
Ryan

I had almost discounted a changeover to freezing rain on Sunday night into Monday, but I've stayed up late tonight to watch the European model come in. It shows the shallow cold air dipping into Region 8 before the precipitation moves out. Let me start with where the freezing line is at 6AM on Monday morning according to the Euro:

There's a lot of weather to talk about over the next week. My philosophy is typically to take one storm at a time, but there is just too much ahead. Below is a program we use called BUFKIT. If you have read the blog in the past, you know that it is a program we use to look at model data and we can graph numerous variables on one screen. Oddly, the the timeline goes from right to left. Notice, there are three distinct time periods to watch:

2012 is over. Some would argue that the Christmas night Blizzard was the biggest weather story of 2012 in Region 8. While that was big, I think the weather event that impacted us more was the drought. After looking through the record books, it appears Jonesboro had the 7th driest year on record! Here's the Top 10 driest years on record now:

1. 27.86" 1943
2. 29.09" 1963
3. 31.99" 1941
4. 32.22"  2010
5. 32.30" 1901
6. 32.82" 1971
7. 33.57" 2012
8. 35.33" 2005
9. 37.07" 1977
10. 37.47" 1986

In Jonesboro, we were 14.53" BELOW average for rainfall. In case you were wondering, we finished 2012 with only the snow we had on Christmas night. If you recall, there was not any snow in January or February. Also, the state ended the year with 18 tornadoes and ZERO deaths from tornadoes in the state of Arkansas! That's some great news. The average number of tornadoes in Arkansas is 33. 

We're still bouncing back from the drought. Barge traffic is starting to pick back up on the Mississippi River and the water levels are heading up. Hopefully our local farmers will have a better year on 2013!

Have a Happy New Year!

Ryan