Snow and Ice to Make Travel Difficult Friday

Weather Update – 10:15 p.m. – Thursday

A Winter Storm Warning has been issued for most of West Tennessee from midnight tonight through 6 p.m. Friday evening. In these areas, snow and ice will accumulate Ffriday morning and afternoon making travel difficult in the Mid-South. McNairy and Hardin counties are under a Winter Weather Advisory where snow and ice accumulations will be lower. Storm Tracker 7 Max Radar (www.wbbjtv.com/weather/interactive-radar) shows the rain falling now that will eventually transition to the wintry mix and snow overnight. Temperatures will continue to be mild this evening with the sharpest drop in temperature happening after midnight.

West Tennessee is only at the beginning of the winter storm about to set in. The weather is certainly is starting to feel like something is brewing with a very muggy environment in West Tennessee.

The cold front will move in overnight allowing for rain to continue until overnight those showers will change to freezing rain and sleet. We won’t have that constantly all morning long but we will have a prolonged period of it through sunrise. The cold air is moving quicker and should catch up to the ice quickly enough so that we’ll see more snow tomorrow than ice. There’s a good chance we’ll have some spotty power outages due to very windy conditions developing on Friday too.

Overall, we’ll see snow and ice accumulate across most of West Tennessee with a trace amount to 2″ for most spots with upwards of 2″ possible in northwest Tennessee. There will generally be a trace to a quarter of an inch of ice collecting on tree branches and power lines with isolated higher totals accumulating from tonight through Friday morning. Then the cold air hits and we barely have temperatures above freezing for the next several days. This could mean very little melting takes place and what melting occurs during the day will likely refreeze and form black ice overnight. Stay with WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News for updates to the forecast, and keep up with Storm Team Weather online too for more updates.

Tom Meiners
Storm Team 7 Chief Meteorologist, CBM
Twitter – @WBBJ7TomMeiners
Facebook – facebook.com/WBBJ.tom.meiners
Email – tmeiners@wbbjtv.com