x
Breaking News
More () »

Garrett’s Blog: Winter Weather Late Sunday

A strong cold front will sweep across the area late in the afternoon on Saturday in Northwest Arkansas and then Saturday night in the River Valley. Temperatures...
Image 18

A strong cold front will sweep across the area late in the afternoon on Saturday in Northwest Arkansas and then Saturday night in the River Valley. Temperatures on Sunday will be much colder and likely won’t make it out of the 30s across much of the area.

The chance for freezing rain, sleet, & snow increases at sunset on Sunday with around 8pm being the most likely onset time. It will continue on and off into Monday morning but will likely be out of the area by sunrise on Monday. Temperatures will be in the 20s and roads are likely to be slick and slow.

The most likely impact will be slick roads and school cancellations on Monday.

Because the accumulation will be a mixture of rain, freezing rain, sleet, & snow… actual accumulation numbers will vary a lot from one place to the next. Here is the current thinking regarding how the system evolves:

Image 14

Most of the precipitation will happen during the night-time hours on Sunday night into Monday

Image 15

The dominant precipitation type will be snow in Northwest Arkansas and sleet in the River Valley. There may be some freezing rain capable of power outages south of Fort Smith to near Waldron. Right now, ice amounts will be just shy of the usual .25″ threshold usually needed to pull down powerlines but a few outages will probably occur in rural areas.

Image 16

Accumulations will vary due to several precipitation types. In Northwest Arkansas, current forecast data suggests an average of around 2″ with some locations +-1″

Image 17

The the River Valley around 1.5″ of a freezing rain, sleet, and snow mess will occur on average with some folks picking up a little less farther south and a little more farther north.

Accumulations are not as important as temperatures. For example, we had 10″ of snow occur a few years ago with no road problems at all because the temperature was 35º. We also had .05″ of ice early this year with 30º that closed a major interstate and state highways.

Lows are forecast to range from 20-25º which means it will have no problem sticking to road surfaces with no sunshine during the night time hours. As such, travel is expected to become slick and slow for the entire area on Monday morning. Conditions will likely improve by early afternoon once the sun starts to warm the ground and temperatures warm back up in the 30s.

More updates throughout weekend…

-Garrett

 

Before You Leave, Check This Out