Could the Track Be Changing Again? Updated look at the Christmas Week Storm

Last night, the models were all in pretty good agreement with taking this storm system from north-central Texas up through western Missouri and then into Minnesota which lead me in the direction of providing you the information in the latest post. Things may be on the change again. Not a huge surprise to me, though. As I had previously mentioned until the storm system really moves into the U.S. the upper air data would not be that great and that would influence the model outputs.

This morning's model runs are all further east with the track of the storm system and tend to take the low from Texas to Arkansas into Missouri and then northward. They do have different solutions as to exactly the track they show. The American models are similar and are hinting now that the storm may track almost due north along the Mississippi river to eastern Iowa. Similar solution shown by the long range models about 4 to 5 days ago. This would shift some of the heaviest snow further east from eastern Kansas northward through eastern Nebraska/South Dakota and northwest Missouri, western Iowa and into western Minnesota.

My gut feeling on this storm system is that it will be ejecting from the southwestern U.S. in two pieces. The first to likely shear more north and west from Texas to western Missouri while a second will eject out and spin up a secondary surface wave in eastern Texas/Louisiana and track then north-northeastward. In addition, a surface low may also spin up off the Carolina Coast and move northward into the Mid-Atlantic as the Texas low drags a cold front south and east and cyclogenesis spins up a new low. Looks like it will likely be too warm for snow, though, with this system for the East.

I will take another look at things late this evening and provide any new ideas at that time.