Several Inches Possible

This will certainly not be a very quiet Christmas week as we are tracking a major winter storm moving in from the south. I talked about this last week but it worth mentioning again. This storm is called a “Panhandle Hook“.   These storms originate around Texas and Oklahoma and ‘hook’ northeast toward the upper Midwest. This is the kind of storm that caused a blizzard across Iowa and Minnesota last week.

One of the things that strikes me today is that we are finally seeing some consensus in major model tracks. I have two models that I’ve been looking at the past several days that are now almost mirroring each other.

GFS forecast model for Wednesday at 1 pm. (Courtesy Weather Underground)

This model is bringing a heavy band of snow to are area by Wednesday afternoon. Below you can see what this model output is for snowfall .

The graphic above is the total  snowfall output from the GFS Model, (Courtesy Earl Barker’s Wxcaster). This shows a 6″ plus out put through Wednesday night.

The European Model (Courtesy Weather Underground)

I’m now a little more confident in seeing that both of these medium range forecast models agree on the placement of this system. The European seems to be a bit farther east but it does mirror the GFS in many ways.

The NAM model (Weather Underground)

In internet language this is an OMG solution. Abundant moisture here has our area getting hammered with heavy snowfall. I’m not totally sold here, but this model takes the low farther north than either the GFS or ECMWF do.

Are you ready for the snowfall output?

NAM model snow output (Earl Barker’s Wxcaster)

This is amazing as it has a bulls-eye across Fort Wayne with 16″. This is a little extreme right now but at least it gives you an idea of the models and output we are dealing with today in putting together our forecast.