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Wild whiplash of winter weather to take place Friday

Posted at 12:43 PM, Jan 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-11 09:25:58-05

The weather roller-coaster is set for a wild ride across WNY Friday!  We drop from the 50s into the 20s by the end of the day taking our precipitation from rain to freezing rain and sleet back to snow.

Friday morning will be the mildest part of the day as temperatures fall through the 40s with rain showers.  Potentially dealing with ice jam flooding between the combination of mild temperatures and snow melt and rainfall.

Early afternoon a cold rain will be falling across WNY as temperatures continue to fall, now into the mid-30s.

Afternoon drive time, 3pm-7pm temperatures drop to freezing.  Rain switches to freezing/rain sleet and over to snow from northwest to southeast.  Very slick road conditions as the switch occurs.

Friday evening turns all liquid to ice and snow begins to accumulate.  Expect a couple of inches by mid-night and very tricky travel conditions.  20mph winds, wind chills in the single digits and frozen slippery roads.

Friday night, snow accumulates from northwest to southeast through Saturday morning, generally 4-7" near Buffalo and 6-12" inland, east and south of Buffalo.

As temperatures continue to fall and colder air filters in, our snow will take less moisture to make more snow.  As an example, typically if you take 10 inches of snow you can melt it down to one inch of water.  On Saturday morning, if the environment looks right, we could take 15 inches of snow and melt it down to one inch of water.  This shows even if it's the same amount of moisture, we could get higher totals out of this event and that could lead to higher amounts above a foot!  On the other hand, if it takes longer for the change from rain to snow to occur and more falls as sleet/freezing rain, totals can be limited.

For the rest of the week's forecast, click here