ROANOKE, Va. – Mother Nature made a New Year’s resolution to get more active early in 2024, and we don’t mean she’s hitting the gym.
We’ll track a multitude of storms in the first six days of the new year.
Let’s break each of them down with the information we have right now, understanding that forecasts become less detailed the farther you look.
New Year’s Day
The system we track New Year’s Day will be similar to the one we saw this past Saturday. It mainly produces snow on our favored west slopes.
Some scattered snow showers and flurries may sneak east of that - into the New River Valley and Highlands - though with little accumulation expected.
Aside from that, it will be a windy and cold day to get the new year started.
Thursday, January 4, 2024
This system is a bit of a close call. In order to get a big storm, you need the cold from the north and the storm track to the south to play ball. As you can tell, it’s close.
Most forecast data indicates this will mostly be a swing-and-a-miss, leaving us with a brief burst of snow Wednesday night into Thursday morning. If this were to be the case, accumulations would be less than an inch west of Lynchburg-Danville.
Any further connection between the cold and the storm track can change this.
Saturday, January 6, 2024
This storm system has some legs. We know it’s digging farther south toward the Gulf, which tells us we’ve got plenty of moisture to work with. A storm is likely, if not guaranteed.
What we don’t know seven days out is what kind of precipitation you see/how much of it you get.
Here’s why. Just like real estate, it’s all about location.
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Scenario 1: High pressure to the north would indicate more cold air being transported in the lower levels of the atmosphere. This would mean a longer period of snow and/or ice.
Scenario 2: High pressure to the east would still mean the potential for ice along and west of the Parkway, but it would also mean rain elsewhere.
In an age of information being readily available at any instant, some of us might demand answers this far ahead. You can get answers, but they’ll be wrong answers. Forecasting (especially winter weather) is a process.
It’s usually not until 2-3 days from a storm that we get a better idea of precipitation types, amounts, timing, etc.