An icy situation could show up for parts of this area overnight Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Moisture will be thrown over our cold dome of air around midnight just in time for Santa to "slide" down the chimney. For areas around Rutherford County and most likely, upper Cleveland County, the temperatures and dewpoints at start time look like they might be within the freezing rain threshold. This is almost a classic "cold air damming" or "wedge" scenario for western North Carolina. There's a couple unique, and unknown factors for the ice potential this time, namely, a heavy snowpack of western NC right up the East Coast. The models aren't catching the temperatures at the surface properly since the glacier fell a few days ago, and no doubt this will skew the forecast temps some. Also, the models never catch "cold air damming" properly, and to be honest, this one has huge bust potential, even more so than normal. I would be surprised if there wasn't significant, if not major, ice storm accumulations across northern Rutherford County and areas close by come Christmas morning. There's still a little time to trend either way. Hopefully, you'll be just 33 and all rain Christmas morning....nobody needs power interuptions right now.
Once we get past this, the fun just keeps on coming. Next week, split flow!!
This time, we'll have cold air in place to boot, something that hasn't happend since February 2004. The maps have a cold and snowy look across the Southland next week. Stay tuned!
Thanks for the update Bobby. I really appreciate all your work with the forecast. I check it all the time, can't wait for next week.
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