Lowcountry residents woke up to a rare sight on Friday morning: a snowflake in many weather apps, indicating the potential for a white Valentine’s Day.
Long-range forecasts indicate that an arctic air mass and increased chance of precipitation will collide in the Lowcountry in mid-February, said Neil Dixon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston. But it is still unclear how exactly the system will be configured and it is unlikely to be just snow.
“Almost all the winter storms that we see and experience in Lowcountry are going to bring a variety of winter climates,” said Dixon. “We are likely to see a period of liquid rain, a period of freezing rain and then hail and snow.”
At the moment, an arctic air mass is centered in the upper midwest. The expectation is that it will migrate slowly towards the Southeast.
Between February 12 and 18, there is a 60 percent chance of lower than normal temperatures, according to the Climate Prediction Center. The Center also calls for a slightly high chance of more rainfall than normal in that time period, at 40 percent.
As cold air descends from the northwest, a warmer and more humid air mass will form in the south of the region, and the combination of the two will determine what will fall from the sky – or not, said Dixon.
The last time Charleston saw a significant amount of snow was in the first week of 2018, at an event that covered much of the South Carolina coast and closed Charleston International Airport for days.
Come back to learn more about this development story.
Talk to Chloe Johnson at 843-735-9985. Follow her on Twitter @_ChloeAJ.