A LOT OF WINTER ON THE WAY

Good afternoon.  After a brief break, winter is back in full force.  Parts of northern Indiana could have significant totals on the ground before the week is over.  Before I get into everything, here are some quick headlines of what I am tracking this week:

-light snow north tonight

-snow system New Years Day through Thursday

-storm system for Sunday

-major arctic cold next week?

A weak clipper arrives tonight for northern Indiana.  This will stay north of Indianapolis.  Parts of extreme northern Indiana could pick up 1" out of this by tomorrow morning.  

Another system arrives beginning Tuesday night for extreme northern Indiana, and that snow will stall out for a while up that way, and gradually push across the state late New Years Day into Thursday.  Lots of question marks remain for this system.  The system will be diving out of the polar jet, however there will also be a storm system coming out of the subtropical jet to the south.  When these two streams phase, this could become a bigger storm.  However, at this time it appears these will phase to our east.  How quickly they will phase will impact snow totals locally.  At this time there is potential for accumulating snow, whether it is an inch or several inches remains to be seen.  If you are heading out east to the East coast NYC/Boston/etc. there could be significant amounts of snow late this week.  Let me quickly show you a couple model runs.  Here is the snowfall output from the latest GFS.  It puts significant snow down along the Indiana counties bordering Michigan, with 2-4" elsewhere across the state. 

To compare, here is the NAM snowfall output.  Notice how it is not impressed with the snow totals unless you are up in extreme northern Indiana.  **These are just model runs---not an actual forecast!!** 

There will be an arctic front approaching our region on Sunday, and the question remains whether or not a storm will develop along it.  Some models say oh yes, while others show only a little bit of precipitation as the front moves through.  Confidence remains very low as the models are on their usual waffles.  

Behind that front, there is potential for some very frigid temperatures next week.  Some of the models have been spitting out EXTREMELY cold numbers.  Have to urge extreme caution, models have been going back and forth on this.

Bottom line, there is lots to track over the next week.  Expect changes!