Ready or not, here comes winter

Example of how the temperatures may look heading through Monday - Tuesday

Good Monday morning!! I think what is about to happen this week gives a lot of credibility to the long range forecast models that we look at in making predictions. This bitter cold snap has been showing up in the data for just over a week, and it's about to arrive on strong north winds later today and tonight. You will know the front has passed when the wind switches and within a couple hours of the fronts passing, the temperature will have dropped about 15-20 degrees.

Consider this for a moment. The normal high on January 1st is 41 and our forecast is about 10-15 degrees colder than that for the middle and end of the week. So this is definitely a big deal for November.

Front will be through much of the state by 10 p.m. Monday

By 6 p.m. tonight, the front should extend from KC to near Wichita down into western Oklahoma. It won't take long for it to get cold and wind chills tonight will easily fall into the single digits and teens for much of the state. Some snow flurries are likely after dark, but the moisture is very limited and it will move quickly, so there's no chance of any accumulations.

Forecast for snow Saturday/Sunday (this is from one computer model)

So if the long range forecast models are getting better, we should have higher confidence in what may develop this weekend and beyond. There is a chance for our first accumulation of snow to move in Saturday and Sunday.  It's not a big storm system, but the first chance of getting snow to stick to the ground is always a big news story. Based on the way things look now, some parts of the state could get an inch or two by Saturday evening or Sunday morning. The ground should have cooled off a lot by the time we get to the weekend, so that's why we think the snow will probably accumulate when it falls Saturday/Sunday.

And this colder than normal weather is likely to last for 10-12 days. We may not get back above 40 degrees until the weekend before or the week of Thanksgiving.

There is a lot to talk about this week with the changes going on in the atmosphere. Thanks for sharing comments and feel free to ask questions. I'll do my best to answer them in a timely manner. Stay warm.