Jim Duncan's First Warning Forecast
The storm for later Sunday through Monday night is still slated to be a major-impact system for Virginia, with a mixture of precipitation types across the Commonwealth. Most of the daylight hours on Sunday will be dry, even with some sun early in the day. Winter Weather Advisories have been issued by the NWS for most of southeastern Virginia, with Winter Storm Warnings in northern areas. They are in effect from 4 p.m. Sunday through 7 a.m. Tuesday. We'll likely see more alerts issued later Monday/ Monday night with future updates.
The system will come in two phases, the initial one Sunday evening into early Monday, then the coastal Low develops east of Virginia later in the day Monday, bringing a few more hours of a mix back to snow before ending. Storm totals will be on the order of up to 2 inches in the Advisory areas, and 4-6" in Warning areas.
For southeastern Virginia, snow and a mix will start by early evening, changing over to just a mix and then to rain overnight. There will be some accumulations of snow in many areas before the change. Here are the GRAF model forecast maps for Sunday evening and early Monday morning.
Snow totals will vary over eastern Virginia, with generally light amounts from Hampton Roads and south, with higher amounts towards the Peninsulas and Eastern Shore. Below are totals forecast in the first phase from Sunday evening, and the second map reflects totals that include any additional snow from late Monday from the offshore storm before it pulls away.
Stay alert for travel and road impacts from Sunday evening through Monday morning, and then again Monday night through Tuesday morning. Very cold air moving in Monday night will keep things slick by freezing any water on roads into Tuesday, so use extra caution.
Those frigid temperatures will be accompanied by some sunshine for the rest of the week until later Friday, when we'll be watching for the possibility of another system developing from the south into early next weekend.
