textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- Periods of cold weather with mostly dry conditions can be expected for the next week.

- Monitoring trends for low potential for light snowfall over southeast Mississippi from late Saturday into Saturday night.

MESOSCALE UPDATE

Issued at 942 PM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

The latest satellite imagery showed a few clouds over the delta but much of the CWA will see clear skies and a near calm wind tonight allowing temperatures to bottom out below normal. Coldest morning lows are still expected over the eastern half of the area where mid to upper 20s will be the morning lows. /22/

DISCUSSION

Issued at 223 PM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

Tonight through mid next week (Wednesday)...

Through Friday night: Longwave trough analyzed over the area today is progged to swing eastward this evening, bringing surface ridge axis right over top of the area. This will lead to gradual switch of northwesterly winds to southerly tonight through Friday. Favorable radiational cooling will setup, while steady to a touch milder low temperatures along and west of MS River corridor. Lows will be seasonably cool in some areas overnight, some 4F to 8F below (25F to 34F) while seasonable to the west. As thermal trough builds east Friday, southwesterly low level return flow favors seasonable warmth/mild high temperatures, some 5F to 10F above (55F to 70F). A deeply amplified synoptic pattern will drive another front, moist convergence and colder air southward into Friday night. There could be a few showers that develop just northwest of the Natchez Trace corridor Friday evening and spread southeast through daybreak Saturday. There doesn't look to be enough lingering precip to overlap with any cold advection Friday night, so the precip type should stay all rain.

This weekend: While confidence remains for deeply amplified synoptics and cold, trends are moving in the negative direction for potential winter weather. As we move into Saturday, polar stream energy will be digging across the MidWest states, with critical spoke of jet energy/vorticity moving into the Plains. This will continue to dig southward through the day, leading to broad isentropic ascent and potential overrunning of moisture over the colder air through the afternoon to night. The afternoon will be seasonably cool but any winter weather, albeit trending more minor, would be into Saturday evening. The synoptics have come more in alignment, with the amplitude similar in the GFS and European guidance and backing in the low-level flow. However, the spoke of energy/positive vorticity advection (PVA) strong over southern TX to the ArkLaTex, leading to potential faster east-southeast progression, and less residence time of moisture advection overrunning cold advection Saturday evening. Recent convective allowing model and ensemble suites, including RRFS, blended guidance and others, have trended negatively for much in the way, if any, of light precip and resultant thermal profiles supporting light snow accumulation. Earlier ensemble mean and probabilistic data this morning were much drier, with probabilities to exceed one inch near the Highway 84 to Interstate 59 corridors to southeast and recent runs to exceed a half inch even more confined in southeast Mississippi. With that being said, we will keep some sort of messaging to outline lowering probabilities of potential light snow accumulation in southeast Mississippi. Combined with cold temperatures, this could correlate to very minor travel impacts. However, trends in global and ensemble suites continue to trend in the direction of little to no accumulations and subsequent impacts. Regardless, we continue to message some light snow in the official forecast and accumulations in southeast Mississippi, with snow flurries in the Interstate 20 corridor. These areas further north could be more moisture starved and have a tough time squeezing out much in the way of flurries, but cannot be completely ruled out. This will be quite progressive and any precipitation will move out quickly around daybreak Saturday. /DC/

Relevant portion of previous long term discussion is below:

Late Weekend into Next Week: Forecast confidence is greater now for continued cold weather as we go into next week, but as of now, we are not seeing dangerous levels of cold materialize in the explicit forecast. We'll also have to monitor for perhaps another sneaky shortwave trough that could interact with the cold air to bring additional winter weather threats, but there are no specific indications as of now.

Amplified pattern becomes more zonal into mid week, with moderating temperatures before rain chances move back into late week, just after the end of the forecast period. /DC/EC/

AVIATION

(00Z TAFS) Issued at 520 PM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

VFR conditions wl prevail through the TAF period. However, a period of non convective low level wind shear will be psbl across the nw 10-15Z and a gusty sw wind 18-20kts wl develop areawide by 15Z before subsiding by 23Z. /22/

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

Jackson 31 64 37 51 / 0 0 30 0 Meridian 27 62 36 52 / 0 0 50 10 Vicksburg 33 65 35 50 / 0 0 20 0 Hattiesburg 31 67 42 57 / 0 0 50 10 Natchez 34 68 37 52 / 0 0 30 0 Greenville 33 59 34 45 / 0 0 10 0 Greenwood 31 61 33 47 / 0 0 10 0

JAN WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MS...None. LA...None. AR...None.