Saturday, March 16, 2013

March 22 Potential Gulf Coast Snowstorm

The latest run of the American GFS model is forecasting a snow event on the Gulf Coast, with upwards of 2 inches possibly falling in central Georgia and Alabama.

Past forecasts of the American model have had this snow hitting Tennessee and Kentucky rather than the Gulf Coast, but as we approach the timeframe when the models begin to align, more attention must be given to solutions like this. It appears that a rogue piece of energy may have the right ingredients to drop only a few inches of snow anywhere from Tennessee to the Gulf Coast. Because we are over 5 days away, additional movement of this projected snowfall is expected. It is possible the snow may not even fall. However, I feel that with the atmospheric pattern favoring storms being suppressed further to the south this sort of solution may not be so out of the realm of possibility. In my eyes, it is certainly something to watch.

Andrew

2 comments:

Mikhail Fomin said...

Can you post a free link to verify this GFS solution? Other GFS 12z forecasts that I use don't show this snowfall in places like GA and SC.

Eric said...

Andrew, I am more inclined to think that storm system would dump its snow over the south-central Plains as the ECMWF shows because that system coming late next week into next weekend looks a lot like the winter storm that occurred around March 20th in the 2009-10 winter, which dumped an abnormally large late season snow over many areas of OK, AR, KS, into IA and the Great Lakes, all the way down into Texas, even Dallas.