December 1, 2014: Welcome to December. We have a wintry event that will push through the region today. Some locations will end up with a cold rain and some will end up with a mixture of freezing rain and sleet. Freezing rain is rain that freezes upon contact with a surface. No real changes from the maps I put out over the last few days. The only change is that the National Weather Service has officially issued some freezing rain advisories. Couple of items of concern... 1. Sidewalks, patios, and decks will freeze first. That means your first step could be the one that causes you to fall and injure yourself. It may appear to be just wet, but in reality it is ice. Use a lot of caution over the next 24 hours. Surfaces are WARM to start with because of the upper 60s and lower 70s on Sunday. It may take a few hours for surfaces to cool enough for ice to form. Every year I have someone tell me that they fell on the ice because they thought it was just a wet surface. 2. Bridges and overpasses freeze first. You can be driving at 50 mph and think that everything is fine. You then travel over a bridge and lose control. Happens all of the time. If you know that temperatures are at or below freezing then use care. 3. The freezing rain line has been a PAIN to forecast over the last few days. I did my best to hold steady on the maps I put out for you. Very small shifts, but tried to maintain some continuity. We will just have to see if they end up panning out as expected. The area I have been most confident about appears to be on track for periods of freezing rain, freezing drizzle, and sleet over the next 12 to 18 hours. The southern part of the outlined areas (on the maps) is where there is some debate as whether temperatures will remain at or fall below freezing. The National Weather Service has expanded the freezing rain advisory area. The Memphis, Tennessee NWS has also added some counties over northeast Arkansas into the Missouri Bootheel and one county in northwest Tennessee (that was as of 5 am this morning). Whether or not additional counties will be added is up to them. If you live outside the advisory area then monitor updates as we move forward. Temperatures will eventually fall below freezing across all of our counties later this afternoon and tonight. If precipitation remains in areas south of the freezing rain advisory then there could be patchy issues, as well. Temperatures will moderate a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our next real precipitation chances arrive Wednesday night. There could be a brief period of frozen precipitation with that event, as well. It does appear to be mostly a rain event. Still some time to fine tune that part of the forecast. Stay tuned. Last week all of the data indicated this week would end up quite warm. With each passing day it appeared it would be a bit colder than forecast. This is interesting because that is what has happened since last October (2013). We ended up with a lot of cold weather during the winter months. We will see if we have a repeat this winter. Brief warm ups followed by long periods of cold weather. Use care today - I will post some precipitation tracking links below. I will be out most of today. If I see a question then I will try to answer. I think I have covered most everything over the last few days. Radars Remember my radars are interactive and you can choose Winterize to see what type of precipitation is falling. This is a computer algorithm based products. It is usually correct, but there are times it can be a little off (esp when temps are right around freezing) Jason Darnall also is uploading a GR Radar to my radar site. This one would likely be in winter mode, as well. Also remember that freezing rain simply appears as rain when you look out the window. The difference is that freezing rain freezes on contact with trees, bushes, and other surfaces. Several people last year (during freezing rain events) said it wasnt doing anything at their house. They looked out the window and saw it raining. It was actually freezing rain. weatherobservatory/weather-radar.htm
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 12:07:12 +0000