Winter Storm Warning – Tuesday Afternoon Briefing

DEM Blogger

March 3, 2015

This afternoon, we participated in a conference call with the National Weather Service’s Louisville office regarding the winter storm that will arrive in Lexington on Wednesday. A picture may be worth a thousand words – how many is a map worth? We’ll start with two from the NWS briefing slides:

You can click to enlarge, but the takeaway is that Lexington will see the changeover to snow begin around 2:00pm Wednesday afternoon on the north side of Fayette County, with the whole county being fully involved by 5:00 pm. Total accumulation for this system through Thursday will be a potential 10 to 13 inches, with peak accumulations of 2″ per hour. Wind gusts of 20mph will also be occurring.

Unlike our last winter storm, this will be wet, sticky snow – good for snowmen, not so easy to shovel. We may see some sleet mixed into the snow during the changeover hours. While roads are not expected to see significant icing, we could see some accumulations on elevated power lines (which are colder). Along with snow sticking to the lines and trees, this may cause more power outages than we saw two weeks ago. With this weather system still 24 hours out, there is some time for the situation to change, but this is shaping up to be an extreme winter weather event.

Behind the storm, we’ll see a movement of Arctic air that will drop temperatures near zero on Friday morning.

We’ll remain engaged with NWS Louisville as this situation develops. Check back with us for updates – here on our blog and on Twitter (@lexkyem) and Facebook (LexingtonKYEM).