1/21/26 Wednesday 2:30 am
Believe it or not, these types of storm setups are more difficult to forecast for our area than they are further to our east. Which is interesting because it has to go through us to get to them. Timing on this event is still to be determined, but it is likely to get underway sometime on Friday through Saturday or Sunday.
If I were seeing this storm dissipating or dying after it leaves our area, I would be much, much more confident in our forecast. But at the moment the models are showing a storm where everyone gets in on the action. That rarely happens.
What does historic mean? If I saw correctly, the all-time record for snowfall in Nashville is just under 18 inches…
As I said, it is easier to forecast for the South Central Plains than for us. So I am just going to put this out there. Travel will be impossible across most of Oklahoma and northern Texas.
If you think you are going to drive a route that takes you across eastern New Mexico and Oklahoma, it won’t happen. Arkansas? Forget about it.
If you are planning on airtravel that takes you anywhere in or out of Oklahoma, it isn’t going to happen. Thousands of flights are going to get cancelled during this storm. Nashville, potentially Memphis, and Dallas will likely also see major impacts this weekend. Kentucky, Virginia, DC, watchout.
I had to use a different snow output model to reflect the colder air.
This is the event snowfall in inches.
Going forward, I won’t be posting maps for what happens to the rest of the US, but I wanted to get it out there for those thinking they are going to be traveling that direction.
So what about us? That is the multi-million dollar question. My concerns are from my past experiences with these types of storms. When they telegraph their intentions for areas east of us so boldly, we have seen the energy from these systems go by us so quickly that we mostly get missed in the lower elevations.
That said, there is potential for an NW flow component on the backside of this storm, bringing a lot of low-density, very high-ratio snow to the Northern and NW San Juans.
Assuming everything comes together for us, a lot of snow could fall for everyone. Hopefully, you did not skip over everything just to see these maps. I have very low confidence in these totals for our area. So why show them? Just to show you what would be possible in a near perfect set up. This is snow in inches.
This setup shows the cold air arriving at the perfect time, and the moisture and primary and secondary energy sticking around long enough. If that happens, these totals would be too low by 50-100%.
Again, my confidence level is not high for our area, but very high that a major winter storm will result in a huge travel mess east of Colorado.
Stay tuned. For now, I am not going to be able to give anyone solid advice on traveling in SW Colorado.
I just noticed I forgot to put the “D” and “T” on the maps. I don’t have time to fix that right now, but I will include it in the future.