Heavy Snow — Issaquena, Mississippi

2018-01-16 · Issaquena, Mississippi

Event narrative

Heavy snow fell across the county with amounts ranging from 1.0 to 2.0 inches.

Wider weather episode

Accumulating snow impacted the ArkLaMiss on January 16, 2018 with accumulations ranging from - 3 inches across much of the area. During the early morning hours on the 15th, a strong arctic cold front was quickly moving through the Central Plains towards the Deep South with an impressive 1050mb surface high pressure ushering in a brutally cold arctic airmass behind the frontal passage. Further aloft in the atmosphere, a closed cold core upper-level low was located over the Upper Midwest with a positively tilted trough axis extending to the west/southwest through the Northern Plains. A 120 kt jet streak diving into the base of the trough helped the trough dig further south and west over the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles as the closed low transitioned into an open wave. By sunrise on the 16th, the trough axis was oriented from Lake Michigan southwest through the Southern Plains with a strengthening upper-level jet stretched from northern Arkansas through Maine. This orientation allowed flow to become more backed out of the southwest which resulted in sufficient moisture return over the ArkLaMiss. At the same time, the arctic cold front had raced well ahead of the upper-level forcing with temperatures plummeting well below freezing. This set the stage for the moist southwest flow aloft to overrun the cold arctic air and produce an anafrontal band of snow as right entrance region jet dynamics overspread the area.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 735654. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.