KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- We have an overall cold pattern for the next 5+ days in the area, as repeated shots of chilly to colder air come down from Canada will be the general flow for the next week before we may warm up a bit more (that is still sort of iffy though). With this colder pattern, two disturbances will be moving towards the region. One rainmaker and one snowmaker. The intensity of the rainmaker isn't a lot. Dry air in the lower 8-9,000 feet of the atmosphere this morning is chewing on any falling raindrops or even snowflakes up there. This will continue till near or just after lunch. Then we get some rain for a few hours before it winds down towards 5 p.m. The snowmaker is likely to produce some minor accumulating snows with some upside; however, the question is where it will it track and that may now come with any confidence till Friday. It's a sneaky system that will also be a fast mover, but the season's first flakes are on the table for early Saturday morning. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Forecast: Today: Cloudy with rain developing. Amounts mostly under 1/4" with temperatures maxing in the lower 40s then dropping a bit to near 40° later today. Lighter winds. Tonight: Variable clouds with chillier temperatures towards daybreak. Lows in the mid-20s. A bit blustery as well Thanksgiving: Sunny but cold with highs in the mid-30s Friday: About the same ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Discussion: Thanks for reading the Winter Forecast Blog yesterday. If you click on that link, you can read it if you haven't. Also for those that come here from Facebook, I'm trying to put the link (when I remember) as the first comment after my original post telling you that the blog is new. This is because of the way FB is cutting/reducing posts with links from being seen on your feeds to some extent. I may be doing this with X as well. Onwards. Yucky cold morning, although after falling to near freezing early this morning the lower clouds that have moved in with bases as of this morning around 8500 feet up have served as a blanket and temperatures actually came up before daybreak into the mid to upper 30s. We may come up a few more degrees this morning before the rains fall into that chilly air. The rain with some sleet is out west as I start this blog but as it comes eastwards into drier low level air below 10,000 feet it's not reaching the ground. This moisture though will slowly saturate the atmosphere over the next few hours and eventually we'll start seeing rain making it to the ground. Radar is generous but again the closest precip this morning is well west (for now). Here is local radar. Again, worse than it looks with the surface map showing precipitation (rain and sleet) out west in the blue-contoured area. That is the 9AM map, temperatures are in RED. There is a surface low towards SW OK this morning and that will pass south of the area today. This will turn the winds more towards the north (because of the counter clockwise flow around the low) and allow colder air to drain south. If you look into Nebraska it's in the 20s now...so that is how we start our Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving and Red Friday should be in the 35-40° range. The snowmaker system is a tough nut to figure out right now. It's not a big storm by any means, it's really just a weak disturbance that will be generated in the central Rockies towards Wyoming and come down the pike towards us. It may strengthen as it races in the flow from the NW -> SE. That too complicates things to some extent. The main issue is who gets the better lifting in the atmosphere from this wave. Model data is sort of all over the place, some data shows that areas SW of the Metro are more favored for some sticking snow, some data shows the KC region as more favored and some data shows areas northeast of KC more favored. Someone is going to get something, I'm just not sure where. The problem with these disturbances is if things come together someone can get 2" worth of snow from it. The atmosphere will support an all snow event from this. Surface temperatures should be near 32° (perhaps colder in the falling snow) and while it may take a bit of time to stick, if it comes down hard enough it will stick and accumulate. The model data is spitting out nearly 1/3" of liquid moisture towards north-central and northeast MO...leaving the KC area with only a couple of hundredths which would be little to no accumulations and just some curiosity flakes of snow. The thing is I'm NOT confident of the placement of that axis of heavier totals because IF you just do a straight conversion that would be close to 3" of snow towards the NE of the Metro Here is the liquid output from the morning NAM model. Focus not on the location (which may well change and come farther south) but on the potential liquid totals. You can see my concern for this. The EURO doesn't do this and also places the axis of whatever falls more towards central MO The overnight GFS hits the KC area... That would be very problematic on Saturday, especially in the morning. So other models do about the same thing...all over the place. I have no confidence in any output right now for exact placement but my theme is POTENTIAL for these banded areas of snow to form and potentially overproduce for who gets into the bands. Our various ensemble chances of at least 1/10" of liquid are all over the place as well, so it's really a low confidence thing right now. Suffice it to say if someone out there got 2" or so of snow by later Saturday afternoon I won't be surprised. We should start to warm up towards the middle and end of next week for a few days but remain vulnerable to another cold shot towards the following week. We could actually make some runs towards 60° with downslope warming air before that happens. We'll see how that plays out. OK that's it for today...questionable for a blog on Thanksgiving, but if there is one it will be out later in the morning compared to usual. The feature photo today is from Chuck Carbajal out in Lees Summit from the weekend. Pretty! Joe