BLOG: Tax Day Trouble?

The weekend will be just about perfect, and I would not be totally shocked if a few backyard thermometers hit 80 Sunday! Enjoy.Now, the bad news. It's still the first half of April and we can't expect "sunny and 75-80" to be our forecast on a consistent basis. Winter still has a little fight left! First of all, Monday will still be quite warm. But, it's easy to see where the next strong cold front will be in the afternoon: By early afternoon, Toledo will likely already have dropped into the 40s...while NE Ohio and western PA will be in the 70s.With this type of air mass change, you would expect rain...and you would be right. Showers will push in Monday afternoon and evening.What about thunder? I think there will be some, but not a ton. There is a modest amount of "Convective Available Potential Energy", or CAPE Monday afternoon. CAPE is essentially a measure of how unstable the atmosphere is. The more unstable...the better chance of thunderstorms. Monday afternoon: Not exactly off the charts.There is a fair amount of wind energy in the atmosphere Monday; so any strong shower or thunderstorm can pull down some hefty winds from up to the 5,000 foot level. Winds at that level will be approaching 50-60 mph by late afternoon:  The Storm Prediction Center has the area in the "general thunderstorm" zone Monday, but not in any sort of enhanced risk. The air mass just will not be unstable enough, mostly as a result of it not being terribly moist. OK, now about the SNOW risk that you may have heard be chirping about over the last couple of days. Monday's cold front will be slowed down by a developing wave of low pressure along the southern half of it. Moisture will linger over eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania....and by Tuesday morning the air will have cooled significantly.I suspect it is going to snow Tuesday, especially in the morning/midday hours. I DON'T think this will be a problem on roads, as temperatures will be above freezing in most areas. But I can see how many locations get accumulations on the grass. A look at accumulation forecasts from the current computer models:European: An inch or two.GFS: Under an inch.Canadian: 2-3 inches.I suspect that accumulations on grassy surfaces will average 1/2"-1" across the Valley. That said, we are 3 days away from this so keep checking in with my thoughts on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Whatever does stick will melt very quickly Wednesday. Another warming trend will kick in at the end of next week.Thanks for reading!Eric