First January "Real" Snow

Our 1st "real" snow will be experienced this Friday overnight into early Saturday morning.  It's now beginning to appear that the precip will begin as snow and continue as snow until the warm air aloft gets pulled over the cold surface temps which will create a period of sleet/freezing rain prior to the precip departing.  Here is the GFS accumulated snowfall map for Saturday morning...

It appears that we will get about a 2-4" snowfall prior to the changeover Saturday mid-morning.  My fear is that the low level cold air will hang tough creating a longer period of frz rain as the storm departs.  This "storm" will not be a classic winter storm for us in any sense...but it is one of these events that traverse the entire country.  You can clearly see its path across the northern tier of the US above.  The little bit of flurries we will see Thursday evening is associated with a weak clipper that will bring in colder air to set the stage for our "moderate" event.  Saturday morning will be a GO SLOW and not a DON'T GO morning...Below, the GFS has the rain-snow line (dark black line) right over us during Saturday morning...

OK...gotta go....have a good Thursday!

Smitty

AA:  Brief flurry Thursday evening sets the stage for Saturday early morning snow event changing to ice and maybe just end as plain ol' rain!  Get up here for lunch today!