Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Wintry Weather for Thursday Night/Friday Morning?

A cold front will move through North Carolina today ushering in colder air leading to a big cool down for Thursday. Tomorrow's high temperatures should be about 20 degrees colder than today. With cold air in place over the Carolinas Thursday, our attention will turn to a developing storm system along the Gulf coast. That system will push additional moisture into our area overunning the cold, dry air that will already be in place. That sets up a weather pattern we refer to as a "cold air wedge" over the central Carolinas.

With precipitation falling into that "cold air wedge" beginning Thursday evening, there is the chance for some wintry precipitation. That may begin as a quick burst of snow before quickly changing to a sleet and freezing rain mixture mainly from Raleigh to the north and west. Ground temperatures are warm enough and the precipitation should be very light that little to no accumulation is expected at first. Some elevated surfaces including bridges and overpasses may see a light glazing late Thursday night and Friday morning. Again, this looks to mainly happen on the northwest side of the Triangle and points to the west.

The wintry mix should fairly quickly become just a cold rain for Friday around Raleigh. This changeover may take a while the closer you get to the Triad (Greensboro and Winston-Salem).

As with any winter weather system in this part of North Carolina, the forecast is very tricky. We'll continue to fine tune the forecast as new information comes in. Stay tuned to Weather on the Ones on News 14 Carolina for updates.

For an in-depth look at today's forecast, check out our video blog.

If you like our new video blog, you'll find it updated a couple times a day on our weather page at news14.com.

2 comments:

Felipe Snark said...

Nice blog! I had been reading Jeff Crum's and Matthew East's blog for awhile and I'm glad to more activity on the more Triangle-focused blog.

Lee Ringer said...

Thanks for visiting!