Tracking dangerous wind chills, late weekend snow
TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy and breezy with lows in the single digits. Wind chills -5 to -10 degrees.
TOMORROW: Light snow showers possible early north of I-70. Little to no accumulation is expected. Highs around 10 with wind chills between -10 to -15 degrees.
EXTENDED: Along with the cold, we'll be watching for our next chance of accumulating snow late Sunday into Monday. A strong low pressure system will be moving onshore tonight, and track over the Rockies across the central Plains on Sunday, and move to our south Sunday night into Monday. I am expecting two waves of snowfall at this point, but keep in mind we are more than 48 hours out from this storm system so specifics will likely change a bit.
Light snow showers are expected Sunday afternoon and could potentially be scattered early on, not giving us too many concerns for much of the day. However, snow is expected to fill in Sunday night into Monday morning, especially along and south of I-70. We'll likely get a break through about midday or a little before until our next round of more robust snow showers pushes north. This is where we will see the bulk of our accumulation, with a sharp cutoff to the north.
The amounts we see from this system will largely depend on how far north or south the low tracks. If it jogs a bit farther north, we'll see a more northern extent to snowfall. Vice versa if it tracks more south. As of this afternoon, the center of this low looks to move across Arkansas, with the axis of the heaviest snow across southern Missouri. The farther north you go, the lower the expected amounts drop. I think areas between HWY 24 and HWY 50 could get about an inch or so on Sunday night, with areas near the lake picking up around 2" on Sunday. With the second round on Monday, we'll add another inch or two to Columbia and Jefferson City, with an additional 2-3" near the Lake and I-44. These amounts could change depending on the storm path, so watch closely over the weekend.
Snow looks to come to an end Monday evening, but we could still have issues on the roads on Tuesday AM with temperatures below zero and wind chills even colder than that for the morning commute. Tuesday is still quite cold with snow on the ground, with highs in the teens. We warm a bit into the 20s on Wednesday and Thursday, but we could see another round of snowfall for parts of the area over that time frame. We finally get back into the 30s with highs near freezing and some sunshine to warm us up.
