LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB Fox 41) -- Meteorologist Marc Weinberg says it won't be the ice storm of two years ago, but there will be freezing rain in our very near future -- and there's a very good chance we're about to see more school closings.
The predictions came down in his forecast on the 11:30 newscast on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010.
"The Thursday morning commute is going to be really difficult," he said. "There's no two ways around it. I think it's probably – for Louisville – going to be a higher impact than what we just saw. It's been a tough late fall here and I think it's going to go downhill a little bit.
Some of the highlights of what we have to go through here over the next couple of days: a winter storm watch has been issued Wednesday – late – through Thursday. It's a good move by the weather service, I think, because freezing rain is what you don't want to mess around with.
Light snow looks like it's going to be in late Wednesday, then freezing rain Wednesday night through Thursday. Now across the area, we're going to see, basically, transitions occurring. Southern Kentucky is a good example here. We're going to start off with some snow, go to freezing rain, then all rain. It looks like most of Kentucky will be in frozen for a good majority of this event, but I think maybe the southern part of our area will transition over to rain south of E-town during the day on Thursday.
We're at 15 right now. We've got wind out of the west-northwest at only three. Not bad. It doesn't take much wind to give you a wind chill when it's this cold."
Weinberg said tonight's temperatures were expected to drop down to a frigid 8 degrees.
He then went on to explain why we're expected to see freezing rain on Thursday.
"What's happening is a storm system is starting to evolve," he said. "Now it's bringing frozen precipitation and it moved through Nebraska, through Missouri and on into Arkansas. This is ultimately what's going to be moving into our direction."
So what happens tomorrow (Wednesday)?
Freezing rain starts to develop tomorrow night. By the start of the commute Thursday morning, we will see "widespread freezing rain."
"By 1 p.m. we're still dealing with freezing rain and by 5 p.m. we're starting to slow it down," he said.
Louisville is going to be on an area that likely catches a little snow on the front side of this system, and then transitions to freezing rain. I think we could catch about a half an inch of snow before that transition occurs. That would actually be a good thing because then the freezing rain could kind of cake on top of the snow and maybe not impact the surface as much.
It looks likely to me that Thursday morning is going to be a difficult commute and a huge portion of the area will likely be out of school on Thursday. I would be shocked if we see a lot of schools in.
This is not the ice storm of two years ago. We're talking about what looks like in Louisville about a quarter of an inch of ice accumulation and that is enough to cause extremely hazardous road conditions."
Stay tuned to Fox41.com. We'll bring you weather updates as soon as we get them.
