March 30, 2024 Outlook

A Wild Week Ahead To Start April

From very wet to very white in some areas.

Let’s break it down.

Starting with radar this evening

Showers and some storms rolling through. Storms off to the west in eastern Ohio, plenty of lightning with those.

A severe thunderstorm watch with areas west and some areas currently under those have a warning

The watch for those counties runs to 10pm.

The HRRR holds some of those together coming east, so keep a watch on those for mainly downpours

Some showers around Easter Sunday, widely scattered with most of the day just cloudy with temps in the 50s. It’s not until Monday with the next wave of more significant rain and the real deluge is looking like Tuesday with the boundary and focal point of heavy rain running across the Alleghenies.

Let’s look at the 18z GFS

Rainfall amounts from tonight through Wednesday afternoon around the time colder air should get things switched to snow(a bit earlier perhaps across the WV High Ground)

18z GFS total precip amounts in to Wednesday afternoon

12z ECMWF precip total

WPC outlook for excessive rainfall

Day 3

Day 4

With the boundary setup, the threat of storms, some training storms the flood threat is in play and will be monitored as things get closer. Stay tuned to your local NWS for that and I’ll try to post on Facebook or here as we get closer and in that action.

Now, behind it as we go through Wednesday the storms gets off the east coast.  NW flow, strong upper low over the lakes and off to the races we go across the high ground.

A very similar overall setup to last May with a bit more cold air availability, being exactly  month earlier.

This setup at 500mb

Last May event at 500mb

One more look at the 18z surface outlook

A significant cold air mass for early April. 850 temps during the afternoon running -5 to -6 Thursday and Friday afternoons

So with it precipitating on this northwest flow, the Wv high ground should remain below freezing above 3700′-4000′ from Wednesday PM to Saturday. Lots of afternoon instability, squalls and steady snow. Even with the high sun angle of April, this is how you accumulate day and or night. Just like we saw last May. Now there will be daytime compression, even where below freezing and blowing snow. The least of these impacts are across the tops where temps remain 20s, snow and strong winds.

The 18z GFS snowfall outlook

And the 12z ECMWF

Some differences as the Euro loses elevation. Keep in mind these are not mesoscale models so it’s a bit of a broad brush and has shortcomings in snowfall maps in elevational dependent events.

My thoughts on a vertical scale

This is a multi day event. Meaning snowfall accumulations and snowfall depths will not equal. Areas below 3000-3500 will see more compression, some meltbacks and  2500- 3000′, may see melt back more during the day and accumulate at night. The high Wv ground above 3500-4000′, this looks like a prime setup. 

I stress, it’s days away. Alterations timing, speed,  etc can alter snow amounts. A bit colder air and you can see those higher totals end up a notch lower in elevation. A nice slug comes through at night some of those areas below 3000-3500 can top expectations. So expect tweaks.

Across the tops of all materializes as expected, windblown full on winter look is on the table Wednesday PM to Saturday

These type of winds look likely Wednesday through Friday