Some Snow Still on the Table on Saturday

Here’s the latest GFS Model Run (18Z):

What does that mean? Well, it’s not a super-impressive winter storm, but it’s definitely a chance of some snow on Saturday. Given the air mass’ Arctic characteristics, that kind of moisture coming through could give us higher snow-to-liquid ratios than normal.

The usual rule of thumb for Alabama/Tennessee snow is 7:1 – that’s seven inches of snow to one inch of liquid. An environment like this one forecast on Saturday would be more like 12:1 – twelve inches of snow to one inch of liquid.

The “QPF” (quantitative precipitation forecast) is low, but even with 0.05″ to 0.10″ of liquid, that could be as much as a half inch to an inch of snow on the grass, cars, rooftops, etc.

This is a light event expected to be caused by a strong upper-air disturbance:

These things can be awfully tricky (are you shocked?), so we’ll be updating the idea and adjusting the forecast as we go through this week!

-Jason
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