A Little Snow? Plus, A Look into Past March 1 Weather Events

Well, here we are the first day of March and it feels more like a late January day outside with temperatures struggling only into the middle 40s later today underneath an overcast sky. We even are seeing a few flurries already in portions of north Mississippi!

Here's a sounding valid at 6 AM tomorrow morning across the GTR into adjacent parts of Alabama. While not a classic setup, sub-freezing temperatures are found hroughout most of the column with some moisture seen in the lower 5-7k feet AGL As this moisture and cooler air moves across north MS/AL later tonight into early tomorrow morning, a window of opportunity exists for a brief snow shower or moderate flurry activity, but no appreciable accumulations of snow are expected. Temperatures are expected to warm, relatively, during the day Saturday but will struggle to get out of the low and mid 40s as strong cold air advection occurs.

A brief warmup is expected Monday before more cold air arrives in advance of our next storm system poised to impact the area during mid-week. Here's a 500mb vorticity chart valid for Tuesday morning. East Mississippi is certainly experiencing PVA which combined with warm air advection at 850mb will lead to widespread rain showers Monday evening lasting through the day Tuesday.

But things get interesting Tuesday night as this strong shortwave begins to close off into an upper level low. Strong cold air advection occurring beneath this feature would be sufficient for snow to form, but I think this is a deal where the moisture will outrun the cold air and prevent any snow chances from developing. But, this is still several days and this system certainly bears watching throughout the weekend into next week.

Here's a quick look at some recent weather events that occurred on March 1 throughout the past several years. Notice, this day can have anything from flooding, tornadoes, to snow!

Here's March 1, 2009. Notice over 6" of rain fell in Tuscaloosa over a 48 hour period!

Believe it or not, this is just hours after the flooding rain event shown above. As much as 3-5" of snow fell across Alabama as arctic air interacted with wrap-around moisture!

Above are images obtained from SPC from the major tornado outbreak from March 1, 2007. Unfortunately, 68 tornadoes occurred that day, including an EF-4 tornado that killed 9 people in Enterprise, Alabama, in Coffee County of Southeast Alabama.

In light of these events, I've always been intrigued by the forecast on March 1 because it can be so many things, especially in the wild-weather capital known as the Southeast!

Have a great Friday and weekend, and God Bless!

IW

Data obtained for this post were collected 2/28/13