Thursday - Mostly sunny. High 20-24
Friday Night - Partly cloudy. Low 12-16
Today will be the first sunny and warm day in the last week. With the sun comes a lot of melting and the roads should clear up today. Overnight, there could be some refreezing, especially in gutters and on elevated surfaces. Additionally, there could be a few passing clouds. Early in the morning on Friday could see some fog in some areas, but the warming trend will continue as high pressure moves into the region. Friday night will see more clouds, but a much warmer night than we have experienced. Saturday will be partly cloudy as our next weather-maker begins to have impacts.
The GFS has been the superior model in forecasting the snowfall earlier this week, so therefore the initial conditions make it the model of choice for the forecast period. The biggest challenge of this forecast was the transition from the trough into the ridge and consequent warmth that will be affecting mid-Missouri.
Currently, while there still is a trough that has been parked over the central United States for almost two weeks it will continue to be the main focus of our weather. This is creating a ridging like pattern over Missouri, with that ridging pattern there is a lack of convergence at the 250-mb level and warm air advection from the South west which is helping to give the ingredients for temperatures to warm up today. As well with lower levels of moisture and lack of vertical motions in the lower levels of the atmosphere should result in clearer skies than what we have been experiencing.
Going into Friday, conditions are expected to remain the same. The trough at 250-mb will start to push its way east. The ridging pattern will start to become more vertical switching the winds from southwest to south. This will help our temperatures warm up to almost above the freezing point. There will still be a lack of vertical motion and humidity allowing us to see sunny skies for a second day in a row. Those sunny skies will help boost our potential to see temperatures rise over freezing.
The High Pressure system moving along the Gulf Coast Saturday will
provide us another boost due to the Warm Air Advection on the backside
of the anti-cyclonic flow. This southerly wind will tap central
Missouri into additional moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. With that moisture that gives us the potential to see some clouds as humidity starts to increase at 03z Saturday and with that omega starts to increase at 06z Saturday. But these ingredients are not enough to give us the potential for precipitation.
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