SATURDAY SNOW (?) UPDATE

Updated Wed 07:40PM — Today’s models continue with the idea that some light rain may graze us early Saturday morning.  No snow.

GFS Simulated Radar 8AM Saturday

The NAM has backed off of last night’s snow forecast and shows only light rain showers possible before daybreak Saturday into Saturday morning.

NAM simulated radar forecast for 3 AM Saturday morning. Critical temp lines (blue) for snow too far north (arrows)

What’s fascinating about this weather event is how far apart different models are with the development and location of the low pressure system at this point in time.  Here’s the Canadian Global model:

Canadian Global Precipitation forecast Saturday 8 AM

…from Wednesday morning—

So, things seemed very clear last night with the forecast for Saturday.  Most of the models had the storm well east and south of us, barely affecting us. The Canadian and ECMWF are still south and east, with no precip here.

That’s also still true of the GFS and GEFS, but not so clear cut with the  higher resolution NAM that has just come into forecast range (84 hours is the max forecast horizon for the NAM).

The NAM runs from last night and early morning have the storm side-swiping our area with a coating to an inch of snow early Saturday morning:

NAM snow depth forecast 10 AM Saturday

The German ICON ensemble model has a somewhat similar snow depth of less than an inch further west:

ICON Ensemble Model snow depth forecast Saturday

The GFS, showing no snow,  has done the best this year.   I’ll keep an eye on it.