Foggy Start Once Again - Then Rain?

Dense fog advisories are in effect for most of the KDLT viewing area through 10am this morning as temperatures dropped down into the low teens during the overnight with clear skies and light winds (perfect recipe for fog formation). I think many of us are getting used to seeing this sight as we head out the door in the morning... hopefully you're used to the slick roads that are a result of the moisture from the fog as well.

And speaking of moisture, there will be plenty of it as we get into the middle of the week. And not always in the form of fog - we're talking rain and freezing rain in the forecast on Wednesday.

I'm just going to show you one of the forecast parameters we look at. This is Bufkit again for those who are frequent readers... you read it right to left (a little backwards but the times are on the bottom)

Usually this time of the year we see all blue bars on this forecasting tool and that's what tells us that the precipitation we're going to see will be snow. But you can definitely see there's more to this picture than blue. You can see late Tuesday night there is a small blue bar showing snow potential overnight into Wednesday. Through the day on Wed. we'll have temperatures below freezing which usually means snow showers but higher up in the atmosphere, temperatures are going to be warmer, which is why you see those red bars. That's telling us there's a good chance to see freezing rain midweek, so the precip. starts as rain higher up and as it goes through colder air here at the surface, it will begin to freeze. And that's going to cause a major headache on the roads. There are smaller bars Thursday through Friday, so things will quiet down a bit then, but next those large green bars enter the picture - and those bars tell us we're going to see rain, yes, rain on Saturday - and by the looks of this particular model: around a half an inch to 3/4 an inch of rain is expected. Since Saturday ground temperatures will be a little warmer, freezing rain isn't as likely but a slight variation in temperatures could quickly change that to freezing rain or even snow. Temperatures cool down substantially on Sunday but we'll still see this system in our area which will produce snow showers as the system heads out of our area.

Again, just a slight change in temperatures can change the forecast drastically, so stay tuned.

~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka