Forecast for Western/Northwestern WI

Flurries that are around this morning should move on out setting a rather brisk day in the Northwoods… Problem remains with the storm system for Wednesday through Thursday…


***CURRENT CONDITIONS***

At the 9 AM hr we find mostly to cloudy skies across the FA temps are in the lower teens, still see light snow/flurries being reporting in the SFC OBS… Winds are mainly out of the West from 7 to 14 MPH with some stations reporting gusts up to 20-22 MPH…Windchills this morning are ranging from -1 to +4….

***FORECAST DISCUSSION & ANALYSIS***

Lets take care of today and tonight really fast before we talk about major headache…

Today weak high pressure if you want to call it that will take control of our weather…This morning clouds/light snow/flurries should becoming to an end rather soon… Also we do see breaks in the clouds on the VIS satellite imagery… So see no reason why not to run with partly cloudy Skies The RUC model 700 and 850 MB RH fields yielding the same results in the afternoon… Highs today rather chilly lower 20s seen plauseable… Tonight clouds will be on the increase,still should be long enough time in the clear skies to allow temps to fall into the single digits…

Now for the problematic system….

GFS and NAM still faster then ECMWF with all aspects of the storm… So this does not help the confidence levels at all….Lets just go right ahead and break this right down into each model and this way it will show you what we are trying to work out,and why this forecast is one big pain….
First off lets look at the ECMWF model…We see a 999 MB SFC low pressure system in the four corners area…Low is forecasted to move into the OK/TX panhandle areas…. Then the low is forecasted to move Northeast right through Western WI to just North of Lake Superior by Thursday/Thursday early evening….Now ECMWF shows the dry slot moving into the area sometime Wednesday night/early Thursday morning…This only makes the forecast harder…
Lets talk about the GFS model…
GFS has the storm system a little stronger and the track is a little more Westwards through the Western part of MN also moves this system along rather fast… GFS has the dry slot pushing into the area late afternoon or early Wednesday evening…Which is a good 6 HRS faster the ECMWF model….Which would shut down the precip faster for my FA… Ok lets Look at the NAM model…Nam has the storm system even more West the GFS does, however timing is rather close on it, along with the timing of the dry slot…Now lets really complicate things….
Models are forecasting severe thunderstorms to fire up in MO,IL,KS,OK,and AR,this will rob some of the moisture flowing Northwards into the FA…Though moisture is forecasted to lift into the FA around Wednesday early afternoon… Now what type of precip to run with… At the SFC temps temps would be cold enough for snow,however aloft temps warm enough for rain/mixed precip….this would most likely happen right from the get go as precip starts…Once we get some evaporation cooling going freezing rain should change over to all snow from a line from North of Balsam Lake over to Canton and to the North of Ladysmith… This will be the area that will have the best shot at seeing the highest snowfall amounts….Will discuss that in awhile..Meanwhile South of said line the precip is forecasted to remain a wintery mix throughout much of the time frame,by time temps aloft cool South of said line the dry slot would have worked into that area,not allowing for much time for snow….However should see close to an inch of snow in this area…
Will run with storm totals as this for now…..
North of a line from Balsam Lake,Canton,to North of Ladysmith total storm totals from 2 to 4 inches… While South of this line 1 to 2 inches…….
Will leave the long range forecast stand as it is… To many problems in the short term forecast to try to switch the long term forecast around…. So will update that at a later time…