Sunday Storm: Mostly Rain, Watch for Icy Spots Monday AM

A large a very powerful storm system will be moving towards the Carolinas this weekend. This storm is already forming over Texas today and will intensify over the Gulf Coast late tonight. Then it will move over the Carolinas and off the North Carolina coast during the evening on Sunday. Saturday will be just fine around the Charlotte area until late in the day when clouds will start to increase. Saturday night rain will spread across the region from the south and west. Some of this rain will be heavy at times especially Sunday morning. We could pick up between 1-2” of rainfall in some locations by Sunday afternoon.

Sunday evening as the low pressure intensifies off the Carolina coast cold air will wrap around on the back side. With this cold air rain will change to snow in the mountains during the afternoon. Then as the colder air moves down into the piedmont there could be a brief change over to snow as the moisture pulls out. The timing is crucial here because if the moisture moves out first then nothing happens but if the cold air comes in faster than a quick burst of snow is likely. The best chance of this happening in along and north of I-40. This will be brief and with the warm ground and rain from earlier in the day it will have a hard time sticking.

Sunday night into Monday morning is when we could have some travel issues. The rain and snow will be gone but the temperatures will be falling to around 28° by Monday morning. So the fear and threat is that all those wet surfaces from the rain Sunday will re-freeze by the Monday morning commute. It is likely around sunrise Monday there could be many areas of black ice on area roadways.

Stay tuned to NewsChannel 36 and wcnc.com for any further changes in the forecast.