New Year's Eve Snow?

Hey everyone, it is COLD this morning. Temps across the area are down into the 20’s, and that’s not the only interesting development in our weather on this New Year’s Eve... A splitting low pressure system is just offshore, one which was previously modeled to give us little or no moisture. The trend recently however has been for SLIGHTLY more moisture, as evidenced by this morning.  This is the current radar image is of 7:45 AM, with plenty of shower activity offshore, side-by-side with a zoomed 36km image from the 00z WRF-GFS model. Notice the discrepancy in moisture? Curious to see how 12z looks (which is running right now)

Tonight is another tricky portion of the forecast... The aforementioned WRF continues to show slightly increasing moisture for this afternoon, and with a temp/dp spread that we will have due to the cold dry east wind, along with moderate cloud cover holding temps down all day, this would presumably fall as snow. Here is last night’s 00z 4km WRF-GFS moisture image for 4pm this afternoon.
It shows modest moisture (.2-.5”) but as I’ve shown, it MAY be underdone. As more model data and OBS come available, as I will pass on any thoughts to you. I currently think at the most we could see a quick inch or a dusting, but I may amend that later. Keep it right here for the latest
-Josh Gardner



UPDATE: 12z model data is in and showing some very interesting developments. As I mentioned before the trend had been for more precip, and 12z did not disappoint in that regard. The ‎12z WRF 4km for 4pm this afternoon is wetter than previous runs... Steady light precip for 2-3 hours...

And then here's the 4km snow model for the same time.. Trace-1" across the entire metro area.