textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- Today will bring one more day of cold temperatures and potential light snow for some locations.

- Much warmer temperatures will arrive as we move into the workweek, with highs mostly in the upper 50s to mid 60s on Tuesday.

LONG TERM

(Monday night through Saturday) Issued at 435 AM EST SUN FEB 8 2026

There are two systems that will impact the forecast during the extended period - the first is in decent agreement amongst the models so confidence is increasing. However, the second one, models are still very much out to lunch. And they each went to a different restaurant.

We will start the period on Monday night dry, as high pressure is in place across the region. By Tuesday night, however, a cold front is likely to move through the state, attached to a strong low pressure system moving north of the Great Lakes, and another moving into the Southern Mississippi Valley. Models are in fairly good agreement that precipitation will develop ahead of the front, but seems to be more confined to the section of the front closet to the southern- extent low, as high pressure tries to keep dry air across much of the Ohio Valley. The high may win out across our northern CWA, but models are still showing a better chance for precip along the southern half of the state through Wednesday, before the system continues to drive south and east.

It is also worth noting the temperature on Tuesday will peak in the upper 50s and low 60s thanks to return flow advecting warmer southerly air ahead of the approaching front, a ridge in place aloft, and high pressure and upper level ridging leading to sunny and warming skies the day prior on Monday. On Tuesday night, when precipitation is most likely, the front's west to east orientation across the southerly half of the state should keep temperatures here above freezing, and temperatures to the north (generally along the Mountain Parkway and northward at this time) a little cooler, but still potentially just above the freezing mark for much of the night. In other words, the precipitation type for this event should be all rain for much of the CWA. That being said, if the boundary shifts at all, or temperatures are a degree or two colder, can't rule out some snow mixing in for the north. QPF and probabilities are both lower here, so impacts should be limited, even if snow were to occur.

Colder air will begin filtering back in by Wednesday afternoon, with highs only topping out in the 40s and low 50s, some 10 to 15 degrees cooler than Tuesday. High pressure will also begin to take hold by Wednesday evening, continuing through the day Thursday.

Thursday night onwards is where things start to get messy.

First, the NBM is trying to show pops moving into the CWA by Thursday afternoon. Expect this timing to get pushed back as neither the GFS or ECWMF show any precip potential until Thursday night.

While the GFS has general upper-level ridging in place across the Ohio Valley Thursday night, the ECMWF has a large-scale troughing pattern. The ECMWF shows a shortwave moving through the trough and across the state from Thursday night through Friday, producing a localized surface low. This would result in decent shot of localized precipitation coverage to the state during this time. It will also bring a shot of much colder air given the NW flow on the backside of this troughing pattern. Precip quickly exits by Friday evening, with a strong area of high pressure and increasing heights both on tap through the weekend.

On the other end of the spectrum, the GFS shows a shortwave developing within the overall ridging pattern (not troughing), but much farther NW on Thursday night. It won't move into the Ohio Valley or bring precipitation to the CWA until Friday afternoon, some 18 hours after the ECMWF projections. And while the ECMWF shows a quick hit, with precip moving in and then back out within 18 hours, the GFS is much more robust. Once precipitation moves in Friday afternoon (just as the ECWMF is moving the precipitation out), it will persist all the way through Sunday - as a surface low pressure system forms, strengthens, and moves into the Commonwealth during the weekend.

These two models couldn't be much farther apart from one another.

Due to this discrepancy, and the NBM trying to blend two polar opposites together, the resulting output shows chance pops from Thursday afternoon all the way through Sunday. This will not actually be the case. Eventually the models will have to pick a scenario and start to agree on it, which will increase the magnitude of the pops and shorten the time frame which they are impacting the CWA. The other problem with this blending of the two opposite solutions is the temperature and resulting precip type forecast. The GFS will be quite cold, where as the ECMWF solution is likely more mild. When combining the two, the NBM gives a scenario where temperatures start off warm (well above freezing) during the day on Friday, then quickly drops below freezing Friday night, with no ice aloft, leading to widespread freezing rain chances. This simply isn't true. Perhaps in a specific scenario it might be, but there is not enough agreement within the models to trust such a solution. After collaboration with the neighboring offices, everyone was on board with removing any mention of freezing rain at this point. As models hopefully get into better agreement in the coming days, we can re-evaluate if this is actually a plausible solution. In the meantime, kept with Rain and Snow as the two types of precipitation, but again, faith in type, timing, and especially amounts is extremely low.

For the sake of the forecast, hopefully these two models can reconcile their grievances between one another soon. Maybe have lunch at the same restaurant. Possibly even the same table would be nice.

AVIATION

(For the 06Z TAFS through 06Z Monday night) ISSUED AT 1155 PM EST SAT FEB 7 2026

VFR conditions still prevailed at the 06Z TAF issuance and will continue through the bulk of the night. A passing wave does bring increasing high clouds late overnight followed by the potential for a narrow NW-SE oriented band of snow Sunday morning, mostly likely northeast of an KIOB to KI35 line. Confidence in the placement of this snowband remains low, so again only included PROB30s for -SN and MVFR with this TAF issuance. Winds will be light and variable for the rest of the night and through the day, Sunday.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.