Snow tonight and Saturday followed by artic blast of cold air

High pressure passing to our east today will give way to the next storm system moving in that will bring snow to the area this evening. A winter weather advisory goes into effect at 6 PM tonight when a few hours of moderate snowfall is expected to fall. The National Weather Service says they expect 2-3 hours of snowfall rates of up to 1 inch per hour with lighter amounts continuing through the night.

Though the advisory ends Saturday morning, that doesn’t mean the snow stops then. Additional advisories are possible Saturday into Saturday night, as additional rounds of accumulating snow are
likely, however, there remains a fair amount of uncertainty with snow totals for this second round.

snow totals of 3-5 inches are expected through tonight, with the bulk of which will fall with the initial burst. The snow is expected to be a little wetter than the last round we received Wednesday.

There remains quite a bit of uncertainty with potential snow totals Saturday given differences among models. For now, The weather service is using an average of totals given by the models which would be another 2-3 inches overall Saturday. Things could and are likely to change for some areas however as more confidence swings the forecast one way or another.

This storm is also expected to bring a round of severe weather to the Mississippi gulf states as well tomorrow so with that, we are likely going to see some major delays in air travel this weekend, so keep that in mind if you have any flights anywhere.

A few flurries may linger on Sunday as the system moves to the east but the big story then will be an artic blast making its way south on winds out of the northwest behind the system.

Well below normal temperatures will prevail, with highs possibly not getting above the single digits through Wednesday, while lows will fall to negative 7 to negative 13 range Sunday Monday and Tuesday nights. Cold weather advisories for wind chills may be needed Sunday night into Monday morning and also Monday night into Tuesday morning However we do look to stay dry through much of next week.