March (Model) Madness

The NCAA tournament got underway with some great games in the first round, including a few upsets and a few other games that went down to the wire. I have a few brackets that are still looking pretty good through the afternoon/evening games. But, the true madness is that of the forecast models and their differing solutions regarding the upcoming storm system for the Central and Southern Plains this weekend.

As previously mentioned it appeared that we were beginning to trend towards a solution, however, we definitely didn't improve upon the agreement this afternoon. The ECMWF would appear to have the best run-to-run consistency compared to the GFS and NAM, and it also has the furthest south track with the initial shortwave and the eventual closed low over the Southern Plains. The 12z GFS run had similarities, but the 18z also came up with a differing solution in regards to the initial frontal band of precipitation. Thus far the NAM has been thrown to the side for the most part, especially after the 12z run indicated a foot or two possible across Kansas/Missouri.

The storm system is very complicated in itself, dealing with the timing of an initial frontal passage and then the closing of the low somewhere over Oklahoma/Texas. Add in the problem of warm vs cold air and its' timing and we are looking at a sharp gradient between over 1" of rain and upwards of 6" of snow. A lot of questions may not likely be answered until the event gets underway and you can watch the lower level winds and temperature profiles to determine how much and if any is going to fall over certain locations. It still would appear that an area of Kansas/Missouri will see a swath of 6"+ through the day on Saturday; and the heaviest may very well occur over eastern Oklahoma with potentially 12"+ possible. Tomorrow morning after viewing the 12z model runs I will hopefully feel confident enough to say where this heaviest swath is likely to occur...

An additional update is possible late tonight after the 00z model runs are completed (~11pm) otherwise a quick update tomorrow morning can be expected.