textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

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

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

DISCUSSION

Issued at 400 AM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

Our weather over the next week will be strongly influenced by a highly amplified longwave pattern that features a cold eastern CONUS trough. Within the larger scale pattern, a series of polar stream troughs will move quickly across the area resulting in a few cold air events and perhaps a winter weather threat or two as described below.

Today through Friday night: By far, the most straight-forward portion of the forecast is in the near term. Strong cold advection this morning will lead to a chilly, albeit sunny day, for the forecast area as temperatures slowly climb through the 30s and 40s amid brisk northwesterly winds. Under clear skies and light wind this evening, temperatures will fall below freezing for central/eastern MS, with with the thermal trough shifting quickly off to the east and southerly wind beginning to increase ahead of the next trough, we'll see temperatures hold steady or begin to rise later tonight, and then relatively mild conditions can be expected Friday before the next cold front pushes through Friday night.

This Weekend: While confidence is high for our area to get cold weather this weekend, uncertainty increases greatly when it comes to a minor polar stream trough expected to dig through the Southern Plains Saturday and rapidly approach the Lower MS Valley Saturday night. Nearly all guidance continues to trend west/southward with this feature resulting in backing of the mid level flow over the forecast area. Because of this, there has been an uptick in light precipitation potential over mainly southeast portions of the forecast area, with forecast thermal profiles generally supportive of this being in the form of light snow.

Most guidance solutions indicate dry conditions as of now, and the GFS ensemble remains the most aggressive with rain/snow development, but we will continue to monitor future trends with the aforementioned trough, and see how this may manifest in other NWP guidance. In terms of messaging, given that the mention of snow this weekend is rampant in the social media world, feel it is wise to have some sort of messaging to ensure MS residents understand that the low end snow chances and marginally cold temperatures would correlate with minimal impacts. We'll continue to monitor guidance trends and adjust messaging from there as needed.

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. /EC/

AVIATION

(12Z TAFS) Issued at 518 AM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

Skies will be clear through the period. Winds will be out of the north this morning. Gusts have mostly diminished, but sustained winds still remain elevated around 10kts this morning. Winds will relax this afternoon and shift out of the south this evening./SAS/

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

Jackson 46 30 64 35 / 0 0 0 30 Meridian 46 25 61 35 / 0 0 0 40 Vicksburg 48 33 65 35 / 0 0 0 20 Hattiesburg 50 28 67 42 / 0 0 0 30 Natchez 49 32 68 37 / 0 0 0 20 Greenville 45 33 59 33 / 0 0 0 10 Greenwood 45 29 60 33 / 0 0 0 20

JAN WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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