(WOWK) — After a powerful snow storm that left anywhere from just a few inches to 9 inches of snow in the WOWK-TV viewing area Sunday night, the heavy wet snow and even the snowmelt areas are set to refreeze Monday night, prompting many school closures for Tuesday.
Overnight temperatures and overnight road temperatures are set to plunge into the teens, meaning anything that’s wet or snow covered can freeze over during the night. Driving will likely be slow to hazardous in some areas.
Later Tuesday, a little sunshine will allow for heat to build into concrete and asphalt surfaces, meaning there will be ample chances for the snow and ice to melt away once again. Snow on yards will melt much slower than on roads. Road temperatures can jump well above air temperatures thanks to absorbing the solar radiation.
The next storm system comes in with rain in the region on Wednesday. A cold front will catch the system from the west rapidly by Wednesday night and we will see a rapid change to wet snow for several hours. See the slideshow below for an idea of the progression of the next system.
The very early line of thinking is that many of us will see 1-2 inches of snow with pockets of more than that in some of the low land areas and near the Ohio River. The air is a little colder up high in the mountains so we should be able to see more snow stick in those areas. The map below is an idea of the kind of snow this system will bring. Models still need to be evaluated and this is not an official forecast, it’s just a broad notion based on the moisture, temperature profile, movement of the front, surface temperatures, expected water-to-snow ratios and historic amounts from systems such as this.
The issue with this next round of rain and snow is that the roads will be wet when the snap change to snow takes place. A good bit of the snow will melt at the start as it falls into the puddles and wet lawns, then suddenly the snow sticks at the same time the wet surfaces below will start to freeze over. There may not be much to shovel on Thursday in some areas, but the roads could be very slick. Then we get to deal with very cold days thanks to the Arctic Air on Thursday & Friday.
As we arrive at the end of the week, we face a new forecast challenge with a southern storm system that shows up on the American GFS model to our south but the European model has snow all the way north into our region.
Stay tuned for udpates on the coming storm systems. Grab the StormTracker 13 weather app. It’s free and you can download it right here.