Lake effect snow could pile up in parts of Chicagoland

Good Thursday evening. I'm Chief Meteorologist Emily Walls and we have a lot to talk about in the weather department tonight. Our first snowflakes of the season are going to develop overnight and then certainly into early tomorrow. And we're talking a little more than just a few flakes. In fact, some portions of the area could be seeing a couple inches of snow, if not maybe four plus inches of snowfall on the ground. So let's take a look here. We do have a winter weather advisory that's going into effect for southern Cook County. Eastern Will County and all of Lake County, Indiana. This is issued by the National Weather Service and it's going into effect at midnight tonight, lasting until 10 a.m. tomorrow. And this is all to account for the lake effect snow potential. So if we take a look at the radar right now, we have lake effect rain showers. But what we're starting to see. is that this is beginning to pick up in intensity it's starting to pick up in coverage over the last few hours but it looks like in the next few hours from now so throughout this evening into the overnight we're likely going to see this band getting a little bit smaller so kind of consolidating a little bit but when it does that it's going to ramp up in intensity even farther so as temperatures begin to drop we're going to see this transitioning from From rain over to snow. Heavy snow could be possible at times. I'm talking snow rates as high as one inch per hour could be possible. And that's going to be enough to start to overcome the warm ground temperatures. Something that we have to think about with this particular scenario is our ground temperatures are still above the freezing mark. So while we're going to be seeing snow coming down, it's going to take a while for it to begin to overcome the warm ground temperatures, the warm pavement temperatures. With temperatures dropping tonight to right around the freezing mark, things like bridges, overpasses, they always freeze first, right? But the main messaging that we're trying to get out tonight is that for those of you that are within that advisory area, Southern Cook County, Eastern Will County, Lake County, Indiana, this is the area that we could potentially be seeing a couple inches of snow beginning to pile up because that's where our highest snow rates are going to set up early tomorrow. Let's take a look at Futurecast. So running us all the way into about midnight tonight, we're starting to see some snowflakes mixing in. Temperatures are beginning to drop. Again, we're looking at overnight lows for a lot of us that are going to be pretty close to the freezing mark. But then by 5, 6, 7 a.m. in the morning, we're looking at primarily a snow band that is setting up across the area. So when When this happens, of course, we have to worry about visibilities. Quickly changing road conditions and this is coinciding with your Friday morning commute. So for those of you in this region, you know, Southern Cook County, Eastern Will, essentially if you are along or east of I-57, I think that's where we're going to be seeing some of this lake effect snow impacting your morning commute. It's going to be a slow go, I think, for some spots, and we're going to be seeing snow rates as high as about one inch per hour. So again, that is near zero visibility at times, especially when you couple that with high winds. We're looking at wind gusts as high as about 30 miles per hour tomorrow. Taking us closer to noon, we could be seeing still kind of a rain-snow mixture, but I do expect by this point we're primarily going to be switching back over to rain. And then the rest of the day, we're looking at high temperatures that are going to be warming into the lower 40s. Now, jumping ahead to the weekend, the weekend looks better. We'll see an isolated shower or two being possible on Saturday, mainly across northwest Indiana. After that, we're going to dry things out, and we're in for a decent amount of sunshine for the rest of the weekend. And we'll keep that rolling right on into next week. For tonight, 34 degrees for your overnight low in the city. Again, most areas, most suburbs are going to be dropping down to right around freezing, if not a degree or two below that. So once this lake effect starts firing up after midnight, We could start to see some impacts out there on the roads, but I think the worst of it probably isn't going to be until after about 6 or 7 a.m. Seven-day forecast tomorrow, 42, 46 degrees for your high on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, lots of sun, and we'll have high temperatures warming into the 50s early next week.