Light Snow Thursday. Weekend Storm System Update.

Good evening Illinois residents. Its been a bit more of a nuisance week weather wise than earlier anticipated with very light freezing drizzle and "mood" snows occurring that were not well modeled at all.

Tomorrow (Thursday December 6th) we will see a better advertised system move across Central and Southern Illinois. This will bring an area of light accumulating snow throughout the day. Totals won't amount to much, generally an inch or less but a few spots that manage to cash in on a heavier band of snow could see a little more. The below map uses a 10:1 ratio to calculate snow amounts. More importantly is it shows WHERE the snow will fall, and generally it won't amount to a whole lot. 

Of bigger concern to many is the potential for a bigger winter storm to move in over the weekend. Earlier this week we made mention this could be a big storm, and while it will be for other parts of the country, recent model trends have shifted the worst of it south. 

What once looked like a big hit for central and southern Illinois now just appears it may be a graze for the very southern part of Illinois. Still, we are 3-4 days away and its not written in stone. In fact, some of the major models are still way different in solutions where the system will strike first - across Oklahoma and Texas. The NAM model is the most aggressive, dumping record amounts of snow across Oklahoma and showing quite the ice storm in parts of Texas. The GFS and EURO, however, show much tempered amounts of more so of a rain event.

Right now it is still hard to nail down what will happen there, let alone across Illinois a day later. We can just note the trends though and update our forecast accordingly. This trend was first noticed yesterday, and more so confirmed today.

NAM model showing a similar storm track, but also a more expansive snow on the back side. 

Regardless of what happens, the trends seem to be showing this will be an I-64 and south event, if anything. We'll have to watch the storm track closely, as it will be a pretty potent system and any shifts in the track could easily mean the difference between 0 and 6 inches of snow, or ice VS no ice. Stay tuned!

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