Through the course of tonight and into Saturday while the upper low sweeps down from the northwest, the surface low swings east, just south of Denver out into the Southern Plains. For you folks in Metro Denver I think 4-8 inches is a good bet from this with higher amounts north and east of the metro over the CO high Plains. This swath crosses Kansas into Missouri with a widespread strip of 4-8, locally 10-12 inch amounts but I believe it’s once this low pushes further east towards Arkansas and injects a lot of heat and moisture from the Gulf, this thing will crank and you may find a heavier snow along with potential blizzard conditions over Missouri, maybe extending up into southern Iowa as well as east into Illinois. You folks across Indiana and Ohio will see a strip of 3-6 with local 8 inch amounts.

Cities including Wichita will be on the southern edge but could see over half a foot while Kansas City is on the northern edge but again a good 4-8 is possible and same for St Louis, mighty impressive to see this amount of snow from a system so late in March.

Here’s the GFS snow amounts through the next 48 hours.

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Once this system even reaches the Southern Plains and into the Mid-South, it’s all eyes on Baltimore-Washington. Of course this has been a very dissapointing winter with near misses, this could be another near miss or it could end up producing 2-4 inches. This is certainly going against climatology for this area that’s for sure and it’s becoming increasingly rare to see accumulating snow this late on. Will be interesting that’s for sure to see what the urban corridor gets from this. Certainly a few inches are possible up across Philadelphia into New York City while the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania as well as NW Jersey could see a decent 6 inches from this.

Here’s the snow amounts through 60 hrs

Now notice back west the heavier 8-12 inch strip extending from St Louis, potentially through Indy into west-central Ohio then a pep up over the mountains of SW Pennsylvania into the Virginias. That’s with the winding up of the system thanks to ingesting warm, moist air from the south.

That takes me onto the severe weather and flash flood threat from this Saturday and particularly Sunday.

Here’s the surface/precip map for Saturday.

Note there’s plenty of green showing the moisture extending from Texas to the Carolinas, with southerly winds blowing warm, moist air north at the surface while a very powerful low level jet races WSW to ENE across the South at 160kts, this significantly raises the CAPE values or rate of lift/upward motion and where the convergence and diveragence zone comes together, that’s where you want to watch out for severe, tornado, large hail, damaging wind-gust potential thunderstorms. During Saturday afternoon, far east Texas through Louisiana is likely the prime zone for severe storm development.

As for Sunday. Note the system winding up, isobars tightening on the north and west side, that’s why I think folks from southern Iowa down through much of Missouri into eastern Kansas needs to watch for potential blizzard conditions during Sunday but while this is going on within the cold sector, note how this chart lights up in the warm sector with brighter colours. Big time rains extending from Mississippi to Georgia, look out for potential flash flooding as you may get 24-hour rain totals topping 2-4, locally 6 inches.

By 42 hours the GFS has nearly an inch of liquid on the cold side over Missouri, this could equate to easily over a foot of snow, factor in 35+mph sustained winds and you’ve got one heck of a wild late March blizzard going there,

It also really gets those rains going through central Alabama into south Georgia!

At the same period, here’s the upper level chart at 500mb, note the upper energy and speed max pushing into southern Missouri, this is interesting as this not only supports lift in the warm sector but may drive thunderstorm induced moisture into the cold side, driving up snow rates while fuelling the storms which develop in the South. The area to watch I think is southern Missouri as the speed max enters this region. That’s where your thundersnow and 2-3 inch per hr snow rates are going to be!

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