Begining December with Wintry Weather

Temperatures are finally falling to seasonable levels here in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, resulting from a strong and lingering low pressure system that swept across the northern half of the country.

While temperatures have been falling, we've stayed warm enough to keep winter precipitation at bay, but that looks to change this weekend. It's a system we've been watching for about a week, and one that model solutions have had a hard time with. Models have been giving solutions of snow, rain, and a mix for about a week or so are now slowly turning to agreement.

Right now, models are showing a bit of both as we head into Sunday. The low pressure system or shortwave trough will quickly move through the area arriving from the west. There isn't a lot of moisture associated with this system, so any precipitation we see won't amount to much.

But the type of precipitation is the million dollar question, that models are now trying to agree on. Signals now are pointing to a rain snow mix for northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. The system arrives late Saturday and early Sunday when temperatures will be below freezing, when precipitation starts it will likely fall as light snow before transitioning to a light mix before turning to drizzle and fading away early Sunday evening. Again, with the lack of moisture available we won't see much, most likely a dusting of snow and then rain as temperatures climb into the upper 30's for the afternoon.

There are a couple more systems we are watching that arrive in the middle of next week. We'll talk more on that in a later post.