Winter storm will affect holiday travel this upcoming week

While not a direct impact on us, a winter storm looks to affect parts of the Mid-Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys the day after Christmas bringing snow and possible thunderstorms as it moves through.  Low pressure will develop in the southern Plains early this week and track through Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee by Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.  While the track of this storm the past couple days has been fairly consistent with remaining to the south, there is still the potential for a northward shift which could bring some snow into parts of Illinois by Wednesday night.  There will, however, likely be lake effect snow for Chicago so if you're traveling to or from that area keep that in mind.


European Model
Wednesday morning at 6am

Here are two solutions from the GFS and European model for Wednesday morning.  The dashed blue line on the graphic to the left is the freezing line.  A general rule of thumb is any precipitation (green on the map) falling north of the line would fall as snow or a wintry mix and any precipitation falling south of that dashed blue line would fall as rain. 

GFS Model
Wednesday morning at 6am

The GFS model depicts the developing low a little stronger than the European and slightly further north/northwest.  Same concept as before, any precipitation falling where there are dashed blue lines would be snow and any precipitation falling where there are dashed red lines would be rain.  If the track continues to shift further north and northwest this could mean an increased probability of snow east and southeast of Rockford.  Either way, travel the day after Christmas will be greatly impacted for those trying to get home - even if the storm doesn't directly impact the Stateline.

On a side note:  Another system worth watching will be one coming towards the end of this upcoming week; Friday and Saturday.  Another low pressure system looks to develop late this week and track near or slightly south of the area Friday night and into Saturday morning.  If that trend continues we may have more snow to deal with for the upcoming weekend.