Weekend could get a little messy

Update:  Winter Storm Watches have been issued not too far from us across parts of southwestern and western Wisconsin through Minnesota and into the Plains.  Any deviation with the system to the south would mean more snow accumulation for us.  We'll continue to track this through Saturday.


It sure is nice to see full sunshine today rather than the clouds and fog we've were dealing with the past couple of days.  Soak up the sun while you can this afternoon because the forecast this weekend looks like it may be headed downhill.

A persistent trough in the west and ridge across the center of the nation will yield an active weather pattern for us this upcoming week and potentially into the following week.  There are a couple systems we'll be watching going forward this weekend.  The first one will come in during the afternoon Saturday.  Clouds will be on the increase as high pressure departs us to the north.  An area of low pressure will move northeast through the Plains and into the Great Lakes by Saturday night.  As it does a warm front will likely provide enough lift to allow precipitation to begin falling late Saturday evening.  The big question is in what form will it fall.  Temperatures at the surface are forecast to be right around or slightly below 32° which would mean we could see a period of freezing rain during the overnight into Sunday morning with the possibility of minor ice accumulation.  If temperatures stay above 32°, the precipitation that would fall would likely stay in the liquid form.  If that were the case, we could have some flooding on our hands as QPF values are spitting out around an inch of precipitation.

Sunday it looks like the low will move through the Wisconsin/Illinois border which could keep the freezing rain and snow threat going through the afternoon.  If the low were to track a little further northwest and then north the warm front would have a better chance lifting northward which would change the freezing rain to all rain.  The placement of the warm front will be very important as I think there will be a fine line of where we see snow, freezing rain and just plain rain from southern Wisconsin and into northern Illinois.