Winter Weather Update (Thursday Morning)

Before we get a bit more into the storm this weekend, I wanted to update you on an icy situation for late tonight.  A Freezing Rain Advisory goes into effect for most of our counties from midnight to 6AM Friday.  Accumulations will be rather light, perhaps .01" or .02", but just that bit of ice can wreak havok on the roadways.  It might be a good idea to leave a little earlier than normal for your Friday morning commute.  Speaking of Friday morning, here is the Weather Prediction Center's outlook on the probability of at least 0.01" of ice (QC has a 70%-80% chance).

The freezing rain we see tomorrow should be out of the area by lunchtime, and we'll get a break from any precipitation Friday night and into the early evening hours on Saturday.  That's ahead of the next area of low pressure that is expected to travel just south east of the Quad Cities, putting us in the zone for snow.  However, Saturday evening temperatures will be near 32°, so we're thinking right now we could be seeing a wintry mix of rain, freezing rain, snow or sleet to start the event.  Once temperature dip below freezing Saturday night, we'll switch over to all snow.  The snow could be heavy at time.  I am going to post one model run from this morning, which sets the heaviest snow (locally) just to the northwest of the Quad Cities.  This is NOT A FORECAST, just guidance at this point.  Some of the models have been giving less, some have been giving more.  We'll have a better idea within the next 12 to 24 hours on amounts and track. BUT, the models have been somewhat consistent on the track, so we're getting somewhere.  The ECMWF (European) model from last night takes the heavy snow northeast of the QC.

Chief Meteorologist Andy McCray will have more updates later this afternoon and evening on CBS4 and the blog.
-Meteorologist Kyle Kiel