Cold front next week could bring wintry mix to Albany area

ALBANY — It’s going to be a cold first week of 2018, that much seems clear. But just how cold and whether there will be any wintry precipitation such as snow is uncertain.

It might be a good idea to make preparations, such as wrapping exposed water pipes and making sure you’ve got your heavy jacket available, just in case. But buying a sled is probably premature.

“The coldest air is going to be moving in mid-next week,” Katie Nguyen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee that covers Southwest Georgia, said Thursday evening. “There’s going to be some warmer weather this weekend. At the first of the week, we’re going to have a smaller cold front, so it’s going to be quite chilly. But midweek, we’re going to have a strong cold front, and it’s going to be real uncomfortable.”

That front also will bring with it, at least according to the early forecast, a chance for snow, a word that quickly gets the attention of Southwest Georgians who rarely see it. The long-term forecast by NWS meteorologist Jeff Fournier noted that conditions Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning may be conducive for “non-liquid precipitation” over as long as a six-hour period.

“There is” a chance for wintry precipitation, Nguyen said, but she added there also is a great deal of uncertainty regarding how much, if any, can be expected.

“It’s a week out. We hesitate with the wintry precipitation-type forecasts because it’s a complicated forecast,” she said. “We don’t know if it would be snow, rain, sleet or freezing rain, but there’s definitely the potential for some wintry precipitation with the frontal system.

“We don’t want to excite people too much. The further out in the forecast you go, the more uncertain things are. You don’t want to get people excited when there’s a lot of uncertainty in the forecast that far out.”

She said weather forecasters will have a better idea Sunday or Monday as to how things will unfold when the cold air mass arrives midweek.

“Winter forecasts are very complicated,” Nguyen said. “There are a lot of things that could change between now and Wednesday. It would mean the difference between whether you get any snow or a couple of inches.”

In the forecast, Fournier says weather should be fair Friday, with a high in the mid- to upper-50s. After a low in the upper-30s Friday night, Saturday should be in the mid-60s during the day and dipping just to the upper 30s or lower 40s Saturday night.

Fournier said there’s a chance for rain in the region Sunday and Sunday night as a first surge of Arctic air enters the area, followed by a cool, dry period Monday night and Tuesday as the cold front moves south of the region.

That’s when forecast models begin to differ on the strength and timing of the second Arctic front coming from the northwest while the surface front, which is expected to stall to the south, increases chances for moisture to come into the area out of the Gulf.

“To further complicate matters, it may be just cold enough to support non-liquid precipitation for about a six-hour duration,” Fournier said, adding one model shows the precipitation staying south of the region while two others show brief periods of light precipitation in the region. He said precipitation chances were left out of the forecast “for now” because “uncertainty is unusually high. Obviously this forecast is subject to considerable change.”

That’s when things could get bitterly cold.

“After Wednesday a secondary surge of Arctic air will reach the Deep South, with clear and cold conditions to close out the week,” Fournier said, adding it was “unclear as to just how cold it will be.”

Thursday’s NWS forecast had overnight lows in the upper 20s Tuesday night and mid-20s Wednesday night. Projected wind chills ranged from 17 degrees at 9 a.m. Tuesday to 24 at 6 a.m. Wednesday and 15 at 3 a.m. Thursday.

“To help show this increasing threat, we went a little colder than the mean, but may still not be cold enough,” Fournier said in the forecast discussion. “Those who would be significantly affected by extreme cold temperatures and wind chills should closely monitor the latest forecasts.”