Current Conditions at Sanborn Field

Tonight -Cloudy. Freezing rain possible. Low: 32-36

Wednesday - Clouds persist. Chance of rain. High: 44-48

Wednesday Night - Cloudy. Drizzle possible. Low: 33-37

Thursday - Clouds and drizzle possible in the morning. High: 36-41

Friday- Clear skies. High: 22-26
 

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Discussion:  

The chance of freezing precipitation is back for Columbia as chances of freezing rain come into the picture tonight along with little temperature change. Wednesday temperatures warm into mid to upper 40s with rain throughout the day but subsiding for Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. Thursday, low clouds and drizzle will give way later in the morning into early afternoon, clearing out due to the next cold front that moves through the area. Colder temperatures return to the forecast for Friday but sunny skies do as well to round out the work week.

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Forecasters: Azzara, Munley, Brown, and Hirsch
Issued: 4:30 p.m., February 4, 2019

Technical Discussion (The nerdy stuff we are discussing in class!)

The winter temperatures are settled back in after the cold front that came through the area yesterday. Warm air advection has been increasing throughout the day causing large amounts of cloud cover but the upper atmosphere was too dry and was not enough moisture to give us any precipitation this far into the day.

As we move into the afternoon and evening hours we start to see a few more layers of moisture develop in the upper atmosphere but we still have a waft of dry air at around 600 mb stretching to about 400 mb. By around 00Z we see that atmosphere become fully saturated, giving us a high potential for precipitation. At this time we will be above freezing, so this precipitation will be falling in the form of rain. There is convective potential for this system as it moves through the area, so a few rumbles of thunder is absolutely possible, however it will most likely stay to the south-central part of Missouri, due to their warmer temperatures. Our low for tonight will be in the mid- 30's, so we can not rule out the possibility of a little freezing rain if we dip close enough to freezing, but we should remain warm enough aloft to keep that freezing rain out of our area and mainly to the north. PWAT's are generally about an inch and a half, which is significant for this time of year. QPF's are around a quarter of an inch of rain with heavier pockets of rain during the overnight hours.

Another band of showers will come through Wednesday morning, the chance of freezing rain will diminish by this time because we will warm up into the mid-40's for Wednesday's high temperature. A surface low will make its way through the area overnight on Wednesday and into Thursday morning in the form of a cold front. Ahead of this cold front we could see some isolated thunderstorms as the potential CAPE values are a few hundred J/kg. The isolated storms will move out of the area by the morning on Thursday and the cold front will push through following those storms.

This will make our morning on Thursday pretty warm but our temperatures will descend as that cold front starts to quickly take over. This is where we start to see the potential for a wintry mix as we go through late morning on Thursday. We can expect to see a switch over from rain into a snow/sleet mix right before lunch time 18Z Thursday and then should push out of the area by early afternoon. There should not be much (if any) extra accumulation of ice/snow on the ground after this system pushes out for good. While strong storm potential is there for Thursday with a good amount of shear, there is not good consensus among the models for enough instability to produce severe storms. By the end of Thursday, there will be a large temperature difference from when we started the day.

Friday should clear up and we will finally get to see some sunshine but will be the coldest day of the week.