from here:I thought that seeing two or three inches of snow for a few hours on Christmas morning was amazing and about as cool as it could get to live in the South in the Winter. Apparently, I was wrong. Should this come together as it appears to be, a low pressure system pulling in moisture from the Gulf will interact with high pressure circulating cold air from Canada and form a typical low pressure system scenario complete with thunderstorms, except it will fall in the form of snow.
The National Weather Service in all areas around Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas are warning of an incredible event that could see some areas get as much as a foot of snow by mid-day Monday in an area that typically thinks of three inches being an incredible year for snowfall and an average year seeing an inch or two at best.
In addition to the near record amounts of snow that are likely to fall across portions of the South, the National Weather Service is also pointing out that thunderstorms are likely to form in all of this as well. Now we've all heard about thundersnow, and a few of us (myself included) have been lucky enough to experience it.
This, however, will not be thundersnow. It will be a Spring time like thunderstorm (along with many others embedded in the system) with snow replacing the rain. I have heard of at least one tornado touching down in a Winter storm before so I doubt that can even be ruled out with everything coming into place here.
Not to mention, the temperatures aren't going to cooperate for much melting. The "warmest" we will see is a short period of 34 degree weather Tuesday afternoon which might make for some minor melting on top of the snow, but will refreeze as temperatures plunge into the teens and in some cases single digits into next week and will then struggle on Wednesday and Thursday to reach the 30 degree mark.
Thus if we get at least 4 inches it is likely we will still have 2-3 inches come Friday.
I have only seen one thing like this in my life; the 1996 freeze over in which sleet fell for about 12 hours and turned several counties in our region into ice hockey rinks and remained frozen solid for a week.
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic= ... ;topicseen
