Weather Headlines

*Evaporative cooling amid lingering dry air will generate a period of wet snow Monday morning, especially at mid-upper elevations. Accumulations of a dusting up to 1″ will be possible (locally more on highest peaks) before precipitation changes to rain.

*A cold rain with areas of fog, widespread and dense at upper elevations, will be observed from late Monday into Tuesday. This will mark another prolonged period of clouds obscuring upper elevations.

A total of 16 out of the first 20 days of February were in clouds at upper elevations of the High Knob Massif and Black Mountain, including 9 days with riming on High Knob.

*Another system will bring a chance of accumulating snow late Wednesday into Thursday, with a snow burst potential as air turns bitterly cold aloft.

Recent Weather

It seems the mountain region can not buy a “good” snow during this 2019-20 winter season, yet at least, as there remains plenty of time for a break in this snow drought.

A general 2″ to 3″ of snow covered the ground from the High Chaparral community to Eagle Knob into Thursday afternoon, with riming at highest elevations.

At lower elevations the official NWS snowfall total reached 1.1″ in Clintwood, with melting on grass and most of the accumulation on trees, leaves, and above ground objects such as the snowboard!

Although snow has been limited, the February 1-21 period produced impressive amounts of precipitation.

Clintwood 1 W: 8.17″

City of Norton WP: 8.89″

Jonesville 3.1 WSW: 9.30″

**Big Cherry Lake Dam: 11.25″

**Eagle Knob of High Knob Massif: 11.58″

**High Chaparral-Robinson Knob: 11.64″

**The third consecutive February with double digit precipitation amounts.

Looking Toward Meteorological Spring

A colder than normal pattern currently looks to dominate final days of February into early March and the beginning of Meteorological Spring.

This will bring at least a couple more opportunities for snow next week, with a large region of below average temperatures across much of the continental USA.

Unfortunately, toward the end of the first week of March the current ensemble mean is predicting a return to the warmer and wetter than average pattern observed during much of February.

That is a long way out into the model future, so there is plenty of time for changes to occur in this forecast.