Freezing Drizzle??

The freezing drizzle possibility for late Thursday and into Friday I believe is getting less and less likely. Here is why I'm thinking that. First off, looking at all of the models and using all of the forecasting techniques I know, the atmosphere is primed for a freezing rain event. However, there is one HUGE factor that may prevent it from happening all together (well in our area anyway). The models are forecasting an enormous dry layer in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere. So basically, that's saying that there just may not be enough moisture for this to happen. Let me show you. The picture below is what we call a forecast sounding. If you were to release a balloon into the atmosphere, the bottom of this picture represents the ground, and the top of the picture represents the top of the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere that contains weather). We actually measure the height by millibars, and those can be found on the left side of the graph. Remember that 850 mb is about 5000 ft, so that should put things into perspective. The red line on the graph is the temperature as you go up into the sky and the green line represents the dew point. Now, the closer they are to touching one another, the more moisture there is in that layer of the atmosphere. For instance, on the bottom of the graph you can basically only see the green line. Well that's because the two are so close to each other that you can't even see both of them. That indicates there is a lot of moisture. Well, you will notice that the only layer of the atmosphere that has moisture is very close to the ground, I circled that in blue. But the rest of the atmosphere is extremely dry, circled that in yellow. So this may show that there just wont be a deep enough layer of moisture to really get any freezing rain falling. This is the dilemma of forecasting. Still going to say that there will be some very light showers out there but don't count on getting much more then that. Keep watching KDLT and we will keep you updated.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz